Kim Kardashian Reveals Why She Filed for Divorce from Kris Humphries

Well that sure didn't last long! Kim Kardashian has filed for divorce from Kris Humphries.
"After careful consideration, I have decided to end my marriage," Kardashian, 31, said in a statement to E! Monday. "I hope everyone understands this was not an easy decision. I had hoped this marriage was forever, but sometimes things don't work out as planned. We remain friends and wish each other the best."
Humphries, meanwhile, has also released a statement -- one that suggests he might have been blindsided by the news. "I love my wife and am devastated to learn she filed for divorce," he said on Monday. "I'm committed to this marriage and everything this covenant represents, and I'm willing to do whatever it takes to make it work."
The couple was married for only 72 days before Kardashian decided to call it quits. According to TMZ, which has gotten hold of copies of the divorce papers, Kim cites "irreconcilable differences" as the reason for the split from her 26-year-old NBA player hubby and lists the date of separation as Oct. 31, 2011. The site claims that Kardashian has hired celebrity lawyer Laura Wasser to handle the divorce.
Numerous sources, including E! News' Giuliana Rancic and Ryan Seacrest, also confirmed the reports early Monday morning.
"It is true. Kim Kardashian filing for divorce," Rancic tweeted this morning, before promising exclusive details on Monday night's edition of E! News.
Seacrest, who's an executive producer on Kim's E! reality series Keeping Up with the Kardashians, also took to Twitter to confirm the news. "Yes, @kimkardashian is filing for divorce this morning," he wrote. "I touched base with her, getting a statement in just a few mins."
He also broached the topic briefly on his KISS-FM radio show Monday morning. "I've spoken to her briefly and she says she's sad and got caught up in all that was going on," he said.
So it turns out that Kardashian's Aug. 20 fairy-tale wedding, which received a four-hour special on E!, was not all it was cracked up to be. This was Kim's second marriage (the first, to music producer Damon Thomas, lasted four years), and the first to take place on her reality show Keeping Up with the Kardashians.
"She wanted the fairy tale and she got caught up in it all," a source close to Kardashian tells People. "She felt like the pressure of the TV show just isn't what they could have handled."
This Saturday, Kardashian dressed up as Batman villainess Poison Ivy to host a Halloween party at New York City hot spot Lavo. At the time, she said she was there by herself because she was headed to Australia soon after, and downplayed the rumors of marital woes that have dogged her and Humphries in recent weeks.
"Something I really prepared Kris for (was) to let him know that no matter what we do, there's going to be rumors," she said at the party. "It used to really upset me and now I don't even think about it." Sadly, sometimes those rumors turn out to be true.

Rachael Ray goes bra-less at fundraiser

Perhaps Rachael Ray thought her breasts would stand up on their own for the Stand Up for Heroes fundraiser?
Celebrity chef Ray appeared last night wearing an extremely low-cut dress at the Beacon Theater in New York that did not allow for a bra and turned heads. She topped off the look with a black leather jacket that called even more attention to her cleavage.
Bill Clinton, Jon Stewart, Ricky Gervais, Bruce Springsteen, Gayle King and Kathy Griffin were on hand at the New York Comedy Festival fundraiser to witness Ray's bizarre choice of ensemble.

Getty Images

Rachael Ray in her daring dress attends the 2011 Stand Up for Heroes fundraiser.

But they were probably too busy raising money for charity to look too closely: Audience members last night pledged $400,000 for Stand Up for Heroes, and the charity celebrated raising more than $10 million to support wounded soldiers since its founding.

Bronx woman who had been surviving on ventilator dead after power outage

A power outage in the Bronx left one woman dead, after a back-up generator in a rehabilitation center failed early today, authorities said.
A phase went down about 1:20 a.m., leaving more than 4,000 Gun Hill customers in the dark, including the Eastchester Rehabilitation and Healthcare Center, on Eastchester Road, near Bantam Place, whose back-up system failed during the outage, according to a spokesperson for Con-Edison.
One 49-year-old woman, who had been surviving on a ventilator in critical condition, was pronounced dead at the center, after the generator went out. Sources said there had been an order not to resuscitate her. 12 FDNY units took 37 patients, all in critical condition on ventilators, to area hospitals, with the last patient being moved shortly before 4 a.m.
Power was partially restored about 3:30 a.m., and then fully restored by 6:30 a.m., according to Con-Edison.
Police said no criminality was suspected during the blackout.

Democrats to protest immigration crackdowns

WASHINGTON -- In an attempt to invoke the memory and passion of the civil rights movement, a group of Democratic lawmakers will stand in an historic church in Birmingham Monday to help rally opposition to the state's new law that seeks to get tough on illegal immigrants.

The 10 Democrats, including Rep. Terri Sewell of Birmingham, will participate in an ad hoc hearing on the immigration law and later help launch a petition to repeal it at the historic 16th St. Baptist Church in Birmingham. The church was the site of the 1963 bombing that killed four little girls during the civil rights movement.

"The history of fighting for justice and fighting for basic rights is still alive in Alabama," said Rep. Luis Gutierrez, D-Ill., who is heading the trip. "Indeed, a lot of what we know about social movements, about social change and fighting for justice, we learned from the people of Alabama less than a generation ago."

Supporters of the law, considered one of the toughest in the country, welcome the federal lawmakers.

"We live in America. The First Amendment gives them the right to come and say what they want to say," said State Republican Rep. Kerry Rich, a co-sponsor of the measure. "Some of these people are comparing this to 1961 or the civil rights days. Here's the difference - in the 1960s . . . Alabama was wrong for what it was doing. "

Today, he said, the state is right to press for better enforcement of federal immigration laws.

"What we're upset about is they won't enforce the law," Rich said of federal officials. "That's where the breakdown comes."

The fight between state and federal lawmakers continues to escalate as more states, including Alabama, Louisiana and Mississippi, adopt their own immigration-related laws.

That tension is "probably going to get worse before it gets better," said Audrey Singer, immigration expert at the Brookings Institution. "This has become such a divisive issue that people off the top are willing to go to battle. . . . There's tension between what the feds can do and what the states can do."

"It's not pretty, but resolving this issue is becoming an increasingly important issue across the country," she said.

Last week, Republican senators from the South, including Jim DeMint of South Carolina, Jeff Sessions of Alabama and David Vitter of Louisiana, introduced legislation that would block the Justice Department from suing states like Alabama, Arizona and South Carolina over their new immigration laws.

DeMint called it "absurd" that the Obama administration is trying to stop states.

Vitter said states have stepped up to do what the federal government has neglected to do.

"Washington's only response is to oppose the state's enforcement efforts and take them to court," Vitter said. "We're working to stop these politically driven lawsuits by cutting off the ability for the Obama administration to use taxpayers' money to pay for them."

Sessions said the Justice Department "needs to stop going after states that are taking steps in harmony with federal laws to see that our immigration laws actually are enforced and to help end the lawlessness."

The Justice Department has filed lawsuits against Alabama, Arizona and South Carolina. The agency is also reviewing immigration laws recently passed in Georgia, Indiana and Utah.

DeMint's bill would prohibit the agency from using funds to file lawsuits against the states. He introduced a similar bill in 2010 when Arizona passed its immigration law. The measure, which had some Democratic support, failed.

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid of Nevada called the new laws "extreme" and said Republicans instead should work with Democrats to pass federal immigration reform that is "tough, fair and practical."

Gutierrez said had such a law been in place in the 1960's "you could not have fought the Jim Crow laws of the South."

Constitutional law expert Erwin Chemerinsky said Congress can't tell the president and the attorney general they can't challenge laws they believe are unconstitutional.

"Congress has control over spending, but it can't use it in a way that violates the separation of power," said Chemerinsky, dean of the School of Law at the University of California, Irvine.

State lawmakers, many of them Republicans, said they have been frustrated that Congress hasn't acted on immigration reform.

"What we want the federal government to do is enforce their own law," said Rich.

By the end of June, 40 states had enacted 257 immigration-related laws and resolutions, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures.

The Alabama law bars state and local agencies from doing business with undocumented immigrants, requires schools to collect information on the legal status of students and allows law enforcement officials during the course of their duties to detain people if they have a "reasonable suspicion" they are in the country illegally.

Rich noted that two federal courts have upheld major provisions of the law.

Earlier this week, Justice Department officials filed a brief with the 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Atlanta arguing immigration is regulated by the federal government and asking the court to block provisions of the Alabama law.

Gutierrez and other Democrats plan to file their own brief with the court Monday.

"We simply cannot have 50 separate immigration laws," said Gutierrez, who leads the immigration task force of the Congressional Hispanic Caucus.

Sewell said she hopes the congressional trip to her district focuses attention on those in Alabama hurt by the new law and the need for federal immigration reform "not the current piecemeal approach that we're seeing across the country."

"What I hope comes from this is to urge some of my colleagues from both sides of the aisle to do something on the federal level," she said.

In Green Bay, Shares of Stock Are More Than a Financial Investment

GREEN BAY, Wis. — In any other place, they would be called souvenirs, documents suitable for framing, or even a sham. But here in the heart of Packers country, they are stock certificates that confer to the owner a microscopically thin and perhaps meaningless slice of the hometown team.
The Green Bay Packers are the only publicly owned team in the N.F.L., the rarest of rarities in a sport dominated by billionaires and the nation’s largest corporations. The team’s fans are fiercely proud of this status, which dates to 1923 when Curly Lambeau and four local businessmen incorporated and sold 1,000 shares of the team at $5 each to keep it afloat.
It is that pride that is about to be appealed to yet again. According to a filing with securities regulators in Utah, the Packers planned to issue new shares “on or around” Tuesday for about $250 each. The team hopes to raise at least $22 million after fees, about what was generated in 1997, the last time it employed the tactic.
The money raised this time will help offset some of the $143 million needed to add up to 7,000 seats and replace the scoreboard and sound system at Lambeau Field.
The question is, will fans who have closets full of Brett Favre jerseys and foam cheeseheads, as well as stock certificates hanging on the wall, shell out hundreds of dollars for more shares? The short answer is yes, if only because they cannot resist the chance to support their team and indoctrinate the next generation, too.
“We live and breathe the Packers,” said Chuck Olsen, the owner of Olsen’s Piggly Wiggly, which does a big business selling bratwursts to tailgaters on game days. “Everyone wants to be part of this, so I’ll buy a share for my grandson, who is now 1 year old.”
In an era when teams routinely beg, threaten and cajole their host cities into helping them build new stadiums, the Packers’ approach of asking their fans to contribute is refreshingly quaint.
Unlike the growing number of teams that require fans to pay tens of thousands of dollars for personal seat licenses before they can get season tickets, the Packers do not obligate anyone to buy their shares, which cost not much more than a nice jersey sold in the gift shop. (The Packers do charge ticket holders a one-time user fee to help pay for renovations, but the prices are relatively modest and the fees are refunded if they give up their tickets.)
The ability to tap their fans’ seemingly bottomless good will has helped the Packers avoid some of the civic showdowns that have raged in other N.F.L. cities. In neighboring Minnesota, for instance, the Vikings have been negotiating for years with lawmakers, who are split on whether to help the team build a new stadium and how much the public should contribute.
In Green Bay, the Packers issued stock not just in 1997, but also in 1935 and 1950 to bolster their sagging finances, and fans snapped up the shares even though they were little more than a gift to the team. They offer none of the privileges, or risks, of normal shares: they do not appreciate, are not traded on an exchange and produce no dividends. Owners get no discounts on tickets, although some merchandise is available only to shareholders. They can also attend the annual shareholders’ meeting, where they can vote on new board members and pepper management with questions.
With the economy flirting with recession and more than 4.75 million shares outstanding, the Packers are confident that their fans will line up by the thousands to buy shares again. The team currently has 112,264 shareholders.
The shareholders helped keep the team afloat for many years. But the championships of the 1960s and the N.F.L.’s decision to split its national television contracts evenly among all of its teams helped stabilize the Packers and keep them from leaving Green Bay, the smallest city in the league.
Unlike teams in New York, Chicago and other big cities, the Packers have fewer well-heeled fans and companies that will spend money on naming rights deals, multimillion-dollar sponsorships and corporate suites. In 2000, just three years after the Packers won the Super Bowl, the team was the 23rd most valuable franchise in the N.F.L., according to Forbes magazine.
So the team used all the proceeds from its 1997 share sale and the revenue from a half-penny local sales tax increase in Brown County to pay for the expansion of Lambeau Field in 2003. With more seats, restaurants and a new team Hall of Fame, the Packers’ revenue and profits grew.
This year, after winning the Super Bowl again, the Packers are the ninth most valuable franchise in the league, worth $1.089 billion, according to Forbes.

The Packers have gone to the public in the past when we were in trouble,” said Jason Wied, vice president and general counsel of the team, who oversees stadium development. “So to maintain our credibility, we are not going to the taxpayer. Our very survival is not at stake, and we can take on this capital project ourselves.”
This is a big relief to public officials. With consumers struggling to get by, and local governments slashing services, the last thing lawmakers want to do is debate whether to raise taxes to benefit a sports team, even one as beloved as the Packers.
“If it’s a priority, people find the money,” said Jim Schmitt, the mayor of Green Bay, who bought shares for his three daughters in 1997 and was vice chairman of the Lambeau Field Stadium Board when the county raised taxes last time. “You’re not going to see these at Target.”
In a town so devoted to one team, it is not surprising that fans like to brag about going to games, say, during the Vince Lombardi era, or rubbing shoulders with players like Bart Starr and Max McGee. There is also an informal pecking order of fans who own shares from earlier years.
In 1974, Richard Oliver acquired four shares issued in 1950 for $25 each from his wife’s aunt. The shares have since split 1,000 to one, so Oliver technically has 4,000 shares. But the original certificate hangs handsomely in his home office, where he sniffs at the notion of buying newer shares.
“The only people buying them now are the people that want to be boastful and say to their boys at the tavern, ‘I’ve got a share of Packers,’ ” Oliver said. “There’s a certain amount of pride having the certificate.”
For Oliver, who ran a title business for many years, his shares were a calling card. When he spoke at out-of-town conferences, he never failed to meet other Packers fans. He loved to attend annual meetings, which years ago were held in a room below a bowling alley across from the courthouse. Oliver recalls meeting players from the 1960s teams and legends like Tony Canadeo and Buckets Goldenberg.
“It was a good old boys club,” he said. “We knew if we ever lost the Packers, it would be the death knell of the city of Green Bay.”
Annual meetings these days draw about 12,000 shareholders and guests at Lambeau Field at the end of July, and many of them tailgate beforehand. “They’re not doing that at I.B.M.,” Wied said, joking. Some wear foam cheeseheads, including one fan who writes the word “owner” on the side of his.
Unlike a meeting at I.B.M., the annual Packers meeting elicits few questions about the team’s balance sheet. Instead, most concern the team and, this year, the league’s newly signed collective bargaining agreement. Some fans suggest ways to improve the stadium. Shareholders vote on a slate of about 15 board members, who are almost always elected with 99 percent of the vote.
All in all, it is a pretty tame affair, which is not unexpected for a team that has 92,000 names on its waiting list for tickets, or fans rabid enough to buy a piece of paper that calls them an owner. Perhaps, though, if fans hang on to their shares long enough, they will be able to resell them for a handsome profit.
Mike Worachek, who runs a collectibles shop not far from Lambeau Field, said a share issued in 1950 could fetch as much as $2,000, while one from 1935 could bring in five times that amount. Their price will only rise when the new shares are issued, he said.
Still, fans are so smitten with their shares that few change hands, Worachek said. And even fans who have shares are likely to buy new ones as well.
“There are a lot out there already, but Packers fans are funny,” he said.

Other Occupy Sites See Little Change After N.Y. Raid

BOSTON — Hours after New York Police officers raided Occupy Wall Street, the protest that started a nationwide movement of demonstrators camping in front of government buildings and financial institutions, protestors around the country said Tuesday that they hoped the breakup of the New York encampment would energize the movement but that it would otherwise have little impact on their own protests.
At several encampments, demonstrators watched the police raid in New York via live video streamed on the Internet and over Twitter and Facebook.
“I obviously think this is pretty devastating,” said Becca Chavez, 29, a member of Occupy Denver. “It was hard to watch. I think because New York was a symbol for so much, if anything, this will get people involved. What they had set up in Zuccotti Park was a community. They really know what they were doing. I think this will really pull a lot of people in who would have not otherwise thought of getting involved.”
The Occupy Denver encampment, far smaller than Occupy Wall Street, has clashed repeatedly with the police during the last month. The authorities have sought to keep them from staying overnight in a park in front of the state capitol building in downtown Denver. This past weekend, the police arrested 20 protesters after dismantling a sidewalk encampment adjacent to the park, which occurred about one month after a larger crackdown resulted in 24 arrests.
The Occupy demonstrations are intentionally leaderless, and protesters in different cities act independently of one another with each group making decisions about what to protest — though most of the camps appeared to have coalesced around opposition to growing disparities in individual wealth, the perceived greed of corporations and financial institutions, and high unemployment levels.
In Boston, protesters placed a large banner at the entrance to their camp in Dewey Square that read, “At 2 a.m. on Nov. 15 without warning NYPD raided OWS.”
“Last night the air was just electric with anxiety,” said John Ford, who runs the library at the encampment of about 150 tents, which is across the street from the Federal Reserve Bank. “A lot of people were convinced it was happening here.”
Early Tuesday morning at Occupy Chicago, there were only about half a dozen protesters standing amid office workers on a sidewalk across LaSalle Street from the Federal Reserve Bank in downtown Chicago, far fewer than in the early days of the movement last month.
Dan Massoglia, a member of the group’s press committee, said he hoped the raid in New York would re-energize the movement, which in recent weeks has shown signs of strain because of police crackdowns in Denver, Portland, Oakland and other cities, bans on tents, and cold, rainy weather.
“I think it’s terrifying, but whenever there is pushback, especially under cover of darkness, I think it will make us stronger,” Mr. Massoglia said.
Latron Price, 37, an organizer of Occupy Atlanta, said Tuesday that he believed the arrests in New York were a sign that the protests had struck a nerve.
“To see that happen in New York shows we’re on the right track," he said. “These arrests will only strengthen the protests elsewhere.”

Jess Bidgood reported from Boston, and Dan Frosch from Denver. Steve Yaccino contributed reporting from Denver, Robbie Brown from Atlanta and Timothy Williams from New York.

Amitabh Bachchan praises the brilliance of 'Rockstar'

The film frat can’t stop raving about Imtiaz Ali’s ambitious film Rockstar, and Amitabh Bachchan is among those who immensely liked the musical love story starring Ranbir Kapoor and newbie Nargis Fakhri. 

Though Amitabh is elatedly waiting for the new member of the Bachchan household as Aishwarya Rai’s due date is supposedly around mid-November, he took some time off to watch the film Rockstar.

“It’s late but not without cause... just back from RockStar and living in the brilliance of all - Imtiaz Ali, Ranbir, AR and Nargis... Still with RockStar and its beauty,” writes Big B on twitter.

Amitabh also writes about A.R. Rahman’s soulful music in the film. “AR Rahman music takes a while to grow on you and when it does, difficult to let go ..been with RockStar music whole day .. even now !”

Rockstar opened big on Friday. Directed by Imtiaz Ali, the movie chronicles the journey of an aspiring singer Janardhan Jakhar, and how he falls in love with a Kashmiri girl Heer Kaul.

Ranbir Kapoor to enter Bigg Boss house?

The ladies in Bigg Boss 5 who have been complaining of fewer men in the reality show are up for a pleasant surprise. Ranbir Kapoor is likely to enter the Bigg Boss house as a guest to promote his film Rockstar.

If the buzz is to go by, Ranbir along with singer Mohit Chauhan will visit the ‘Bigg Boss -- Aapka Farmaan’ in the coming days. It’s not clear if they will indeed enter the house.

The two have been bonding thick because Mohit Chauhan is the voice of Ranbir’s rocker character Jordan in the film directed by Imtiaz Ali.

We also hear that Ranbir is keen to hobnob with the ladies in the house. Aha! That rings a bell?

Rockstar is slated to release on November 11 and Ranbir is reportedly using his rapport with the host Sanjay Dutt to enter the house and promote the film. Ranbir and Mohit might even give an acoustic performance of one of the songs from the film.

Kareena Kapoor was the first choice for ‘Rockstar’

We all simply loved Kareena Kapoor’s performance as Geet in Jab We Met. Director Imtiaz Ali thought the same! Thus, when he came up with the idea of his next project Rockstar, his initial choice of the female lead was Kareena Kapoor!

However, since the script of Rockstar required some romantic scenes between the female lead and the lead actor Ranbir Kapoor, he could not rope in Kareena as Ranbir and she are related by blood! To fit in Kareena, he could not think of casting any other lead actor other than Ranbir coz he felt that it was a tailor made role for him and no one else could have portrayed it to perfection other than Ranbir.

In a recent interview, Ranbir Kapoor admitted that Imtiaz was keen to work with Kareena but since she was his (Ranbir’s) sister, things could not work out! Ranbir even said that he would love to work with Kareena in the future, provided the roles are not romantic ones!

Ranbir got candid and also talked about his granduncle, late Shammi Kapoor. He said that working with Shammi Kapoor was a learning and memorable experience for him and the whole team of Rockstar! Ranbir was also all praises for the music composer of Rockstar, A R Rahman.

Rockstar is slated to release on November 11th.

Showing the middle finger: The latest Bollywood trend

The Middle Finger Brigade

There was a time when showing a middle finger in real life would often lead to the reaction: “Hawww”. But now, the middle finger gesture is slowly coming to be accepted, and looks like Bollywood, too, is not lagging behind in following this newest trend!

The Indian audiences always look forward to seeing some masala in Bollywood movies. And that’s a fair deal coz masala has been the basic ingredient of our cinema since long. When Akshay Kumar showed his middle finger in Namaste London after winning a rugby match, the gesture was welcomed with wolf whistles from the audiences!

Rani Mukherjee also joined the middle finger league with No One Killed Jessica. The Bong Bombshell, who played a bold news reporter, also complemented the gesture with abusive words!

And the latest actors to join this list are the youthful Ranbir Kapoor and Sonam Kapoor. While Ranbir raises his middle finger in Rockstar, Sonam does it in Players.

The Censor Board not scissoring out the scenes and giving such leverage to the middle finger gesture is a welcome change! It is true that we needed a movie like Ra.One to take Bollywood to a whole new level technologically, but what was utmost required was leniency on part of the Censor Board so as to keep intact the original idea and creativity of directors.

Anyhow, do you remember how your teacher used to ask you to raise your hand if you knew the answer to any question? We ask you to flip your finger if you want to see more of this gesture in Bollywood! Tee-Hee.

Catch the individual images of the actors further.

Catch ‘Rockstar’ girl Nargis Fakhri’s husband

He is not to be seen anywhere at the Rockstar promotions! But model-turned-actor Moufid Aziz has no regrets. He is more than happy to be a part of a big film with good director Imtiaz Ali. So what is he doing in the film? Moufid plays Nargis Fakhri’s husband in the film ‘Rockstar’.

The Brazilian model, who is in India for the last few years, auditioned for the role and luckily got the chance to do a Bollywood film. While talking to a daily he reveals how it happened, “When I met Imtiaz for the first time, it was my second audition for "Rockstar". He told me that the way I looked, it was 50% of what he needed. I had the look - I looked Indian, yet a bit of an outsider. But, there was a lot of work to be done around the character.”

Moufid Aziz, or Moufid Abdelaziz Junior gets to play a suave gentleman who deals with international business ventures. He is also a family guy and cares a lot about his mother and his wife (Nargis Fakhri) in the film.

Moufid even enjoyed working with Nargis who also has a modeling background. And as far as promotions of the film go, he feels in India everything is about hero and heroine. Actress Aditi Rao Hydari is also a part of ‘Rockstar’ and is not visible in the promotions.

I don’t have a plan in life: Ranbir Kapoor

Ranbir Kapoor, who has completed four years in the film industry, says success and failure are a part of the profession he is in and that he prefers not to plan too many things ahead.

“I don't have a plan in life. Whatever appreciation I get I don't deserve it all alone. I can't take the full credit of the success of the film and likewise for failure,” Ranbir is quoted as saying by a news agency.

Ranbir made his Bollywood debut on November 9 in 2007 with Saawariya. On November 11, 2011, when his movie Rockstar releases, he completes his four years. The journey has been a learning experience, says Ranbir.

“I have learnt an important lesson in the past four years and that is to stay focused and concentrate on my work. Factors like fame, money are temporary in life. What stays till the end is the respect that we earn,” Ranbir said.

In 'Rockstar', directed by Imtiaz Ali, Ranbir plays a middle-class Jat boy Janardan Jhakhar, who has the dream of becoming a rockstar like Jim Morrison. He later becomes successful but fame comes with heartbreak.

“We all go through a lot of ups and downs in the journey of life. In the film, though it is a little exaggerated but still it is the same. I had to match up to the character created by Imtiaz,” Ranbir said.

Newcomer Nargis Fakhri plays Ranbir’s love interest in the film. The film also marks superstar Shammi Kapoor's last appearance in a feature film. Shammi Kapoor died on August 14.

“Shammi Kapoor was the one and only rockstar of Bollywood. My grandfather (Raj Kapoor) died when I was very young. So I considered him (Shammi) as my grandfather. We were very lucky to have him in the film. When he first came on the sets of the film he was very nervous. He behaved like a newcomer. He had a cameo in the film and he would ask Imtiaz to increase his role. He flirted with all the girls,” Ranbir said.

Nargis Fakhri’s character inspired from Kareena Kapoor’s Geet in ‘Jab We Met’!

She is beautiful, flawless and has a charisma of her own. Nargis Fakhri was chosen by Imtiaz Ali to be his Rockstar heroine. But the actress’ first role seems to have a lot to do with Kareena Kapoor’s Geet act in Jab We Met. It is said that Nargis was asked to imbibe the traits of Geet, marvelously played by Kareena, from Jab We Met for her role of Heer Kaul in ‘Rockstar’.

Like Geet, Heer Kaul is also a Punjabi girl, a firebrand, extremely beautiful, and bindaas. Recently, Imtiaz Ali revealed that Kareena was his choice for the film, but since the movie couldn’t be made without Ranbir Kapoor and he is the cousin brother of Kareena, things obviously couldn’t materialize.

Those who have seen Nargis in the promotional events of the film can also see the same wild streak, typical of Geet. In fact, Imtiaz has even styled Nargis like Kareena. Baggy salwars and cotton kurtis were part of her ‘Rockstar’ wardrobe.

No matter what, Nargis looks lovely in the movie. Her co-star Ranbir Kapoor is also speaking high of her. While talking to the press, he said, “I first saw a picture of her, very plain, no make-up and simple. Nargis came to the film, not knowing Shahrukh Khan or Amitabh Bachchan or speaking Hindi.”

And, the same girl has wowed everyone. Ranbir says Nargis’ performance is real.

Box office report: 'Rockstar' off to a rollicking start!

Rockstar, starring Ranbir Kapoor as an anguished rocker, has opened to a good start at multiplexes. However, the response at single screen theatres was below expected.

The film has got mixed reviews from critics, with some praising it for its ‘nuanced’ storytelling while others panning it as ‘an unfortunate mess’. But what matters at the end of the day is how the cine-goers lap up the movie.



If the opening day response is to go by, the film has been lapped up at the multiplexes. The response was best in the NCR region, particularly Delhi where some of the shows were housefull. On average, the response to the film stands between 70 to 80 percent at multiplexes, which is a good response.

However, the single screen theatres have been slow to pick up. The response there has averaged 50 percent, which is not up to the mark.

Still, Rockstar is expected to have a good first weekend at box office. Also add to it the fact that there’s no big release from Bollywood next Friday.

The other major release of this week was The Adventures Of Tintin which released in both 2D and 3D. The 3D version got a favourable response with the occupancy ranging between 60 to 70 percent. The 2D version saw an opening day response between 30 to 40 percent.

Box office report: 'Rockstar' rakes in 34 crores!

Rockstar, the new Bollywood release starring Ranbir Kapoor and Nargis Fakhri, has concluded an excellent weekend with a collection totalling Rs. 34 crore nett. But the question everyone’s asking is: will the film hold its ground over the week?

As far as the guesstimates go, it is likely to. For just looking at the business the film has done in three days, Rockstar has been eagerly lapped up big way by the multiplexes going janta in metropolises.

The film opened on Friday with a decent business of Rs. 10.5 crores; the response saw an increase on Saturday as the business went up to 11.2 crores approx; the trend continued and footfalls increased further on Sunday and the business touched the 12.6 crore mark. Totting up the figures, the weekend business of the film is just over Rs. 34 crores, which is a very good response.

What remains to be seen is whether this response continues over the week. The good news is that there is no major release from Bollywood on the coming Friday and Rockstar can have an unrivalled run at theatres till

Pitfalls on the Road to Tapping New Energy

OTTAWA — The United States as one of the largest producers of natural gas in the world. A golden age for natural gas with dramatic increases in both demand and supply. Oil and gas reserves that surpass all the fuel consumed in human history.
These exuberant declarations, oft-repeated by oil and gas experts these days, may reflect the optimism of an industry that not long ago seemed on the defensive and in decline, but there is nothing irrational about them.
New technology and especially growing energy demand from Brazil, China, India and much of the rest of the developing world, which helps keep energy prices high, has made it more feasible to tap so-called unconventional oil and gas resources — from natural gas and oil trapped in shale rock or sand or reservoirs miles below the ocean’s surface. The International Energy Agency estimates that the industry will spend $20 trillion on unconventional sources of gas and oil between now and 2035.
“It’s almost not worth calling it unconventional at the moment because so much of it has become the norm,” said Eric C. Potter, the program director for energy research at the Jackson School of Geosciences at the University of Texas at Austin. “Although we’ve only begun to scratch the surface of what it’s going to take to extract these resources.”
The challenges involved in turning all those reserves into energy, and profits, can get lost amid the industry’s reborn swagger. Few $20 trillion bets come without a downside.
For instance, if the global economy continues to teeter — or worse, if the developing world’s growth slows — energy prices could fall, making some of those trillions necessary to explore, extract and export unconventional resources a riskier investment. At the same time, expanding natural gas supplies at a time when market prices are low may be a hard sale in pure economic terms.
Even greater are the possible political and environmental challenges, which were brought into sharp relief last week by two separate events.
In Washington, the Obama administration postponed a decision on a pipeline to carry a form of heavy crude oil from Canada’s tar sands, underlining how sensitive the politics of unconventional energy are.
Meanwhile, the I.E.A. warned in its annual World Energy Outlook that if the world continues building greenhouse-gas-emitting factories and vehicles at the current pace for just the next five years, it “will lead to irreversible and potentially catastrophic climate change.”
Then there is that rising demand. While normally a boon for any commodity, rising demand could clash with falling productivity at existing conventional wells and squeeze the industry. The falloff in existing fields will be five times greater than the increase in flow from unconventional sources, predicted Fatih Birol, the chief economist at the I.E.A.
Finally, some technological issues remain, too. But those are least likely to brake the growth of unconventionals.
“I’d put economic and environmental challenges side by side,” said Andrew Leach, an economist at the University of Alberta in Edmonton, the capital city of Canada’s main oil-producing province, which is also home to one of the world’s largest unconventional sources, the oil sands.
“We’re at a point where a lot of the new technologies are coming online. But you have to be able to produce at competitive prices and getting incremental oil out of the ground where the environmental impact is limited is much more challenging than with conventional oil and gas,” he said.
The diversity of unconventional oil and gas resources, their location and the technologies required to exploit them, make it difficult to estimate how the cost of recovering unconventional oil and gas differs from traditional wells. But everyone agrees that the gap is substantial.
That financial reality limited interest in investing in unconventionals for many years. Political pressure, even from nonactivist citizens, made leaders in much of the West at least pay lip service to moving toward renewable forms of energy. The Macondo oil explosion in the Gulf of Mexico last year increased public wariness of deep-water drilling.
That climate is changing. “Security of supply” has become increasingly important for China, the United States and other countries, offsetting some of the economic concerns surrounding investment in unconventionals.
There has also been a political shift. In many Western countries, budget cuts are increasing pressure to curb subsidies for renewable energy (and, to a lesser extent, subsidies on oil and natural gas). At the same time, elevated unemployment is boosting support for unconventional oil and gas projects with the potential to create jobs.

The even bigger shift of global economic and political power — with more going to China, Brazil and others — has meant that what the anemically growing and self-doubting West wants weighs less heavily on the world than it once did.
Economic growth in the developing-world powers, and their resulting energy needs, are now more likely to dictate the future of all forms of energy than the campaign platforms of European Green parties.
There is no universally accepted estimate of the amount of unconventional reserves, largely because defining what will be economically recoverable is a moving target. In its report, the I.E.A. estimates that unconventional resources now account for about half of the world’s natural gas reserves and that unconventional oil production, mainly from Canada and Venezuela, will reach 10 million barrels a day by 2035.
“The reserve of unconventionals is unfathomably big,” said Mr. Leach, perhaps 10 to 12 times as much oil as humans have used in history, at 30 to 40 percent more than current prices. “Even if that’s off by a factor of 10, that’s a mind-boggling number.”
Despite the recent growth of unconventional extraction, much remains unknown about several of the processes.
The unconventional oil and gas resource closest to traditional reserves production is coal-based methane drilling. As it sits underground, coal emits gas. Traditionally, coal-based methane was captured with vertical drilling, although that often failed to recover all of the gas surrounding a well partly because of its low pressure.
Modern drilling technology, which allows drills to move horizontally underground,, however, has offered higher yields, particularly when recovering gas from coal beds, which are generally horizontal. The catch is that all other factors being equal, a horizontal well can be three times more costly than a traditional vertical well.
Horizontal drilling technology is also one of the keys to recovering gas and oil from shale. While blood cannot be produced from a stone, new technologies allow oil to be squeezed from shale, sandstone and similar rock formations.
Shale gas holds the most potential for expanding China’s energy production, could turn the United States into a net energy exporter and may make countries traditionally not known as energy producers, such as Poland, players in the business.
But horizontal drilling is only one component in releasing gas trapped in shale and other deposits, which are known as “tight” in the industry. It is generally combined with hydraulic fracturing. More commonly known as fracking, that process breaks apart the rock to free the gas with an extremely high-pressure blast of water and chemicals. Silica or other porous material is then often injected into the resulting cavity to keep it open.
But fracking is not as admired by environmentalists as it is by gas producers.
It can create large amounts of contaminated water, and many environmentalists say that the wells contaminate groundwater supplies. On the surface, fracking projects in North America and Europe are often in or near urban areas. The large, noisy and often unsightly activity above a development site are often an unwelcome addition to neighborhoods.
Then on top of all that, Cuadrilla Resources acknowledged earlier this month that its fracking operations in Britain had probably caused a number of small earthquakes, swiftly leading to speculation around the world that fracking projects might be upsetting the seismic status quo.
The result has been widespread public resistance to proposed fracking projects in a variety of places, including the U.S. states of Pennsylvania and New York, the Canadian province of Quebec, and parts of Europe. “Gasland,” a documentary film by American director Josh Fox has proved to be a popular tool for anti-fracking groups worldwide.
Mr. Potter, a former oil industry executive, said that the extreme depths of fracked wells make it impossible for them to contaminate groundwater
Mr. Fox, in an online rebuttal to oil industry critics, agrees but adds, “We don’t know why fracking chemicals and fugitive natural gas are getting into water supplies; we just know that they are.”
While Mr. Potter and others say that fracking producers need to mitigate intrusions at the surface, disclose what chemicals they are adding to their water injections, and minimize water use, he does not think environmental protests will ultimately stop significant shale gas development.
“We’re already way down that road in the States,” he said, adding that fracking now accounts for about half of U.S. gas production. “But in terms of the future, it’s certainly going to slow growth.”
While fracking has successfully attracted investment and generated production, the process is something of an experiment in progress.
Although large-scale research started on gas fracking back in the 1970s, “there’s still a lot of work to be done just understanding basic flows through the reservoirs,” said John B. Curtis, director of the Potential Gas Agency at the Colorado School of Mines.
That is particularly the case with shale oil. For many years, Mr. Curtis said, the prevailing industry wisdom was that it would be impossible to force oil droplets out of shale, so research focused almost exclusively on gas. That assumption has been dramatically proven wrong by the Bakken shale oil field in North Dakota and Montana, which now produces 400,000 barrels of oil a day even if its inner workings are not well understood.
Trial-and-error shale oil extraction has worked to date mainly because developments have focused on obvious reserves. As is the case with conventional oil reserves, however, not all shale oil and gas will emerge easily, if at all, without further research.
Canada’s oil sands have enabled that country to become the United States’ top supplier of imported oil. But even though many Americans are not aware of Canada’s importance as a supplier, the oil sands are becoming increasingly controversial.
The pipeline project that would send the product of the Canadian oil sands to refineries on the Gulf Coast of the United States requires presidential approval and has become a rallying cry for U.S. environmentalists.
The European Commission is also considering classifying oil from oil sands as highly polluting. While the move would be mainly symbolic — Europe does not import Canadian oil — the Canadian government fears that such a declaration might impede future efforts to expand oil sands exports beyond the United States.
There are two methods for recovering the tarlike bitumen which is mixed with sand and which, after upgrading, becomes synthetic crude oil.
Early operations used huge open-pit mines populated with similarly oversized excavators and dump trucks. That, of course, left behind gaping holes in the landscape that the industry promises to restore, a vow not all environmentalists believe it is possible to fulfill.
More recent projects, known as in situ developments, are somewhat like oil drilling. Blasts of steam are injected into underground deposits to loosen them, creating a slurry that can be pumped to the surface. While those projects minimize the damage to the landscape, they add to one of the major challenges of all oil sands projects: getting energy from the oil sands requires consuming a lot of energy, mostly natural gas. The result is that oil from oil sands creates more greenhouse gas emissions overall than conventional oil.
Several proposals, including the use of nuclear power, have been floated to reduce that impact. The Canadian government and the energy industry have also been funding extensive research into capturing and storing carbon emissions from the oil sands. But an extensive examination of the environmental and health effects of the oil sands released last year by the Royal Society of Canada, the country’s leading academic body, found that carbon capture and storage “does not appear to be very feasible for oil sands production in general and in-situ in particular.”
It increasingly appears oil sand operators will have to settle for efficiency improvements rather than any technology breakthrough.
Deep-water offshore drilling has become increasingly important largely due to new imaging systems which provide geologists with a comparatively complete sense of deep ocean beds. But again, the industry will likely be faced with challenges about its ability to operate deep-water rigs safely, particularly after the Deepwater Horizon disaster in the Gulf of Mexico last year. Those concerns will only become more acute if producers in Canada, Norway and the United States follow through on plans for offshore drilling in the delicate environment of the Arctic.
And then there are the unconventional resources that remain unquestionably unconventional and where the questions surrounding their future are still mainly technological, rather than economic or environmental.
Natural gas hydrates are icelike crystals of water and gas, usually methane, that are found in Arctic permafrost or deep on ocean floors. Canada and Japan have been particularly active in hydrate research. Canada organized a multinational group, which included the U.S. Geological Survey and the Indian Ministry of Petroleum and Natural Gas, to drill for hydrates in the Canadian Arctic in 2002. The three wells produced enough gas to fuel a flare.

Police Clear Zuccotti Park of Protesters

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  Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg on Tuesday defended his decision to clear the park in Lower Manhattan that was the birthplace of the Occupy Wall Street Movement, saying “health and safety conditions became intolerable” in the park where the protesters had camped out for nearly two months.

  Mr. Bloomberg said the city had planned to reopen the park on Tuesday morning after the protesters’ tents and tarps had been removed and the stone steps had been cleaned. He said the police had already let about 50 protesters back in when officials received word of a temporary restraining order sought by lawyers for the protesters. He said the police had closed the park again until lawyers for the city could appear at a court hearing later in the morning.
  “New York City is the city where you can come and express yourself,” the mayor said. “What was happening in Zuccotti Park was not that.” He said the protesters had taken over the park, “making it unavailable to anyone else.”
  The mayor’s comments at a City Hall news conference came about seven hours after hundreds of police officers moved in to clear the park after warning that the nearly two-month-old camp would be “cleared and restored” but that demonstrators who did not leave would face arrest. The protesters, about 200 of whom have been staying in the park overnight, initially resisted with chants of “Whose park? Our park!”
  The police commissioner, Raymond W. Kelly, said that nearly 200 people had been arrested, 142 in the park at 50 to 60 in the streets nearby. Most were held on charges of disorderly conduct and resisting arrest, among them City Councilman Ydanis Rodriguez, a Democrat who represents northern Manhattan. He was with a group near the intersection of Broadway and Vesey Street that was attempting to link up with the protesters in the park. The group tried to push through a line of officers trying to prevent people from reaching the park.
  The operation in and around the park struck a blow to the Occupy Wall Street movement, which saw the park as its spiritual heart. The sweep was intended to empty the birthplace of a protest movement that has inspired hundreds of tent cities from coast to coast. On Monday in Oakland, Calif., hundreds of police officers raided the main encampment there, arresting 33 people. Protesters returned later in the day. But the Oakland police said no one would be allowed to sleep there anymore, and promised to clear a second camp nearby.
  The police action was quickly challenged as lawyers for the protesters obtained a temporary restraining order barring the city and the park’s private landlord from evicting protesters or removing their belongings. It was not immediately clear how the city would respond. The judge, Justice Lucy Billings of State Supreme Court in Manhattan, scheduled a hearing for Tuesday.
  The mayor, at his news conference, read a statement he had issued around 6 a.m. explaining the reasoning behind the sweep. “The law that created Zuccotti Park required that it be open for the public to enjoy for passive recreation 24 hours a day,” the mayor said in the statement. “Ever since the occupation began, that law has not been complied with” because the protesters had taken over the park, “making it unavailable to anyone else.”
  “I have become increasingly concerned — as had the park’s owner, Brookfield Properties — that the occupation was coming to pose a health and fire safety hazard to the protesters and to the surrounding community,” Mr. Bloomberg said. He added that on Monday, Brookfield asked the city to assist in enforcing “the no sleeping and camping rules.
  “But make no mistake,” the mayor said, “the final decision to act was mine and mine alone.”
  Some of the displaced protesters regrouped a few blocks away at Foley Square, with the row of courthouses on Centre Street as a backdrop, and swapped stories of their confrontations with the police as they talked about what to do next.
  
  One protester, Nate Barchus, 23, said the eviction from Zuccotti Park was likely to galvanize supporters, particularly because a series of gatherings had already been planned for Thursday, the protest’s two-month anniversary.
  “This,” he said, referring to the early-morning sweep, “reminds everyone who was occupying exactly why they were occupying.”
  Later the protesters converged on a triangular space farther uptown known as Duarte Square, for the first president of the Dominican Republic, Juan Pablo Duarte. The city owns slightly less than half an acre of land there, on the eastern edge of the square. The western section is owned by Trinity Church, a major landowner downtown, and had been fenced off for the winter recently after an art installation was dismantled.
  With dozens of police officers watching, protesters climbed to the top of the plywood fence and held a general-assembly-style discussion on whether to “liberate another piece of property,” and about an hour later — after some protesters said they had tried to obtain permission to enter the church’s lot — two protesters dressed in black appeared with bolt cutters. They quickly made an opening in the fence.
  As the crowd poured in, police vans sped down Varick Street toward Zuccotti Park, where another group of several hundred protesters was trying to retake the space where they had camped out since mid-September. It was cleaner that it had been in some time: After the protesters were thrown out, workers using power washers blasted water over the stone that covers the ground.
  The cleaned-up park caught the attention of passersby who had become accustomed to seeing the protesters’ tents and tarps. One young father, pushing his toddler son in a stroller, gave police officers guarding Zuccotti Park a thumbs-up sign.
  Another man, rushing by in a cream suit, flashed them a megawatt grin, and a blonde woman stopped in her tracks. "Ooooooh, good," she said.
  Marybeth Carragher, who lives in a building overlooking the par, said she and other residents were apprehensive about the city’s plan to let the protesters return, minus their tents. “I think my neighbors and I are very thankful that the mayor acted,” she said, “but we remain completely outraged for having endure this for nine weeks.”
  The operation to clear the park had begun near the Brooklyn Bridge, where the police gathered before riding in vans to the block-square park. As they did, dozens of protesters linked arms and shouted “No retreat, no surrender,” “This is our home” and “Barricade!”
  The mayor’s office sent out a message on Twitter at 1:19 a.m. saying: “Occupants of Zuccotti should temporarily leave and remove tents and tarps. Protesters can return after the park is cleared.” Fliers handed out by the police at the private park on behalf of the park’s owner, Brookfield Properties, and the city, spelled out the same message.
  The protesters rallied around an area known as the kitchen, near the middle of the park, and began putting up makeshift barricades with tables and pieces of scrap wood.
  Over the next two hours, dozens of protesters left the park while a core group of about 100 dug in around the food area. Many locked arms and defied police orders to leave. Some sang “We Shall Overcome” and chanted at the officers to “disobey your orders.”
  “If they come in, we’re not going anywhere,” said Chris Johnson, 32, who sat with other remaining protesters near the food area.
  By 3 a.m., dozens of officers in helmets, watched over by Police Commissioner Raymond W. Kelly, closed in on those who remained. The police pulled them out one by one and handcuffed them. Most were led out without incident.
  The police move came as organizers put out word on their Web site that they planned to “shut down Wall Street” with a demonstration on Thursday to commemorate the completion of two months of encampment, which has prompted similar demonstrations across the country.
  The move also came hours after a small demonstration at City Hall on Monday by opponents of the protest, including local residents and merchants, some of whom urged the mayor to clear out the park. 
  Before the police moved in, they set up a battery of klieg lights and aimed them into the park. A police captain, wearing a helmet, walked down Liberty Street and announced: “The city has determined that the continued occupation of Zuccotti Park poses an increasing health and fire safety hazard.”
  The captain ordered the protesters to “to immediately remove all private property” and said that if they interfered with the police operation, they would be arrested. Property that was not removed would be taken to a sanitation garage, the police said.
  About 200 supporters of the protesters arrived early Tuesday after hearing that the park was being cleared. They were prevented from getting within a block of the park by a police barricade. There were a number of arrests after some scuffles between the two sides, but no details were immediately available. After being forced up Broadway by the police, some of the supporters decided to march several blocks to Foley Square.
  In the weeks since the protest began, Mr. Bloomberg had struggled with how to respond. He repeatedly made clear that he does not support the demonstrators’ arguments or their tactics, but he has also defended their right to protest and in recent days and weeks has sounded increasingly exasperated, especially in the wake of growing complaints from neighbors about how the protest has disrupted the neighborhood and hurt local businesses
  

Chip Shot: Intel Capital Global Summit - $40 Million in Investments in 10 Asian Companies

At the 12^th annual Intel Capital Global Summit, Intel Capital announced US$40 million in investments in 10 Asian companies, including eight new investments in companies from China, India, Japan and South Korea, and two planned investments in companies from Taiwan. In addition, International Finance Corporation joined the Intel Capital Investment Syndicate program. The program helps companies grow faster by providing global market reach, technology expertise, board members and advisors along with a ready access to additional growth capital over time. Learn more about today’s news from the Intel Capital Global Summit.

Massachusetts Police Accuse Ann Lussier Of Forcing Her Daughter To Strip On Skype

A 41-year-old Massachusetts mother is facing child endangerment charges after she allegedly forced her daughter to pose nude in front of a web camera.
Ann Lussier, of Attleboro, says that a man impersonating a Florida photographer used the Internet phone application Skype to dupe her into thinking she had entered a mother-daughter bikini contest with a $20,000 grand prize, according to the Attleboro Sun Chronicle.
Sitting in front of their computer, Lussier allegedly demanded her 10-year-old daughter to strip down to her bra and underwear before insisting she completely disrobe. The man on the other side of the camera, who police identified as Joshua Dunfee, of Oxford Junction, Iowa., hid his identity by teling Lussier that his web cam had broken.
"There are sickos out there, and they let them go. But I get locked up. I'm a victim," Lussier told the local newspaper.
Authorities arrested Lussier and Dunfee following a month-long investigation which began when the mother told her twin sister about how "uncooperative" her daughter behaved throughout the incident. The sister contacted police after hearing the young girl crying during the phone call.
"The intention the twin sister had was to report that someone, this pervert, was taking advantage of someone vulnerable and their goal was to get him," Lussier's lawyer, Ernest Solomon, told ABC News.
Lussier is charged with "exhibiting a child in a state of nudity, indecent assault and battery on a person under 14, and reckless endangerment of a child," according to NBC affiliate KSEE-4.
Dunfee will be sent to Massachusetts to face child pornography charges.

Is the Health Care Law Unconstitutional?

Just minutes after President Obama signed the health care legislation into law on Tuesday, 13 state attorneys general, led by Bill McCollum of Florida, filed a federal lawsuit challenging the law’s constitutionality. Virginia’s attorney general, Kenneth Cuccinelli, filed a similar suit the same day. Both complaints charge that Congress has no power under the Constitution’s Commerce Clause to require that all Americans buy health insurance or pay a penalty.
Do the opponents have a strong case that the individual mandate is unconstitutional? How likely are the courts to strike down any part of the health legislation?

• Jack M. Balkin, Yale Law School
• Randy Barnett, Georgetown Law School
• Abbe R. Gluck, Columbia Law School
• David B. Rivkin and Lee A. Casey, counsel in the Florida lawsuit
• James F. Blumstein, Vanderbilt Law School

NYC Woman in Medically-Induced Coma After Struck With Falling Shopping Cart

The wealthy Manhattan real-estate agent who was hit by a shopping cart that police say was dropped four stories by two 12-year-olds as she was buying Halloween candy for underprivileged children will "in the best of cases" be in rehabilitation for months, her husband told the New York Post. 

Marion Salmon Hedges has been in a medically-induced coma after she was struck in the head by the falling cart on Sunday while walking outside a Target store with her 13-year-old son in East Harlem, the paper reported. 

Her husband, Michael Hedges, told the Post on Tuesday that his family "is going through a very difficult time."

"It's still too early to tell with neurological issues," he told the newspaper. "Every year on Halloween, 1,000 kids come to our block from less-privileged neighborhoods and we spend $500 to $600 on candy for them and that's what she was doing -- buying candy for those kids to do something nice for the community."

Gaurav Patel, a doctor who witnessed the incident, performed CPR on Hedges, who was later transported to Harlem Hospital where she remains.

"We heard a little boy just screaming," Patel's wife, Susan Mahoney, told the newspaper. "Guarav said she was [in cardiac arrest] for about a minute. He did chest compressions, and she became responsive."

The two young suspects were telling jokes and laughing with each other after they were taken into custody, police sources told the newspaper.

"They were just doing it for fun," one law enforcement source said of the alleged crime.

The suspects were reportedly charged in Family Court with assault as juveniles.

The victim's father-in-law, Michael Hedges, said prosecutors should "throw the book" at the two boys.

Hedges, a 47-year-old mother of two, works for Prudential Douglas Elliman. The New York Daily News reports that she is a volunteer at the Stanley M. Isaacs Neighborhood Center and also very active in her church. 

Dottie Herman, president and CEO of Prudential Douglas Elliman, said in a statement that "Our thoughts and prayers are with Marion and her family as we wish her a full and speedy recovery." 

Judge Rules Teacher Should Lose Job After Facebook Post

 A New Jersey administrative law judge has ruled that a first-grade teacher who wrote that she was a "warden for future criminals" on Facebook earlier this year should lose her tenured job.

The state education commissioner now has 45 days to accept, reject or modify the decision regarding Jennifer O'Brien.

The Paterson teacher posted her remark to 333 friends on March 28. But it was forwarded and several parents saw it.

O'Brien's lawyer, Nancy Oxfeld, tells The Record newspaper that her client will appeal the ruling, which was made public Tuesday.

O'Brien had testified that she wrote the post in exasperation because several students kept disrupting her lessons and one boy had recently hit her.

But the judge called O'Brien's conduct "inexcusable."

Teen Charged With Raping 5-Year-Old at McDonald's

Authorities in the U.S. have charged a 13-year-old boy with raping a 5-year-old girl at a McDonald's play area.

The Hamilton County sheriff's office in Ohio said Monday that the alleged assault occurred Oct. 29. Sheriff's spokesman Steve Barnett says the girl's grandmother was in the restaurant at the time.

The owner of the McDonald's says in a statement that he was upset to learn of the situation. Owner Judson Pickard says he is cooperating with investigators.

Barnett says the boy's parents brought him to the sheriff's office last week after authorities released a security camera photo of the suspect. Barnett says the boy was taken to a juvenile detention center.

Messages were left Monday for juvenile court officials.

Supreme Court to Hear Case Challenging Health Law

The Supreme Court on Monday agreed to hear a challenge to the 2010 health care overhaul law, President Obama’s signature legislative achievement. The development set the stage for oral arguments by March and a     decision in late June, in the midst of the 2012 presidential campaign.  

President Obama at the signing ceremony for the health care law in March 2010.

The court’s decision to step in had been expected, but Monday’s order answered many questions about just how the case would proceed. Indeed, it offered a roadmap toward a ruling that will help define the legacy of the Supreme Court under Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr.
The court scheduled five and half hours of argument instead of the usual one, a testament to the importance of the case, which has as its center an epic clash between the federal government and the 26 states that together filed a challenge to the law.
Appeals from three courts had been vying for the justices’ attention, presenting an array of issues beyond the central one of whether Congress has the constitutional power to require people to purchase health insurance or face a penalty through the so-called individual mandate.
The Supreme Court agreed to hear appeals from just one decision, from the United States Court of Appeals for the 11th Circuit, in Atlanta, the only one so far striking down the mandate. The decision, from a divided three-judge panel, said the mandate overstepped Congressional authority and could not be justified by the constitutional power “to regulate commerce” or “to lay and collect taxes.”
The appeals court went no further, though, severing the mandate from the rest of the law.
On Monday, the justices agreed to decide not only whether the mandate is constitutional but also, if it is not, how much of the balance of the law, the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, must fall along with it.
In a statement issued soon after the decision, the Obama administration restated their argument that the mandate is perfectly constitutional.
“We know the Affordable Care Act is constitutional and are confident the Supreme Court will agree,” said Dan Pfeiffer, the White House communications director.
Leading opponents of the law said they were just as confident that they would prevail.
“It is high time for the high court to strike down this unconstitutional, unworkable and unpopular law,” said Randy E. Barnett, a law professor at Georgetown.  
But even the White House has said that the mandate is “absolutely intertwined” with two other provisions — one forbidding insurers to turn away applicants, and the other barring them from taking account of pre-existing conditions.
The 11th Circuit ruled for the administration on another point, rejecting a challenge to the law’s expansion of the Medicaid program. The Supreme Court also agreed to hear an appeal from that ruling.
The 26 states that filed the 11th Circuit challenge, represented by Paul D. Clement, a former United States solicitor general, argued that Congress had exceeded its constitutional authority by expanding the eligibility and coverage thresholds that states must adopt to remain eligible to participate in Medicaid.
The problem, Mr. Clement wrote, was that “Congress did not tie its new conditions only to those additional federal funds made newly available under” the Affordable Care Act. “It instead made the new terms a condition of continued participation in Medicaid, thereby threatening each State with the loss of all federal Medicaid funds — on average, more than a billion dollars per year — unless it adopts the act’s substantial expansions of state obligations.”
The justices also said they would consider an intriguing threshold issue.
In September, a divided three-judge panel of the United States Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit, in Richmond, Va., ruled that it was premature to decide the case in light of the Anti-Injunction Act, a federal law that bars suits “for the purpose of restraining the assessment or collection of any tax.” The Supreme Court had interpreted the term “tax” very broadly for purposes of the law.
If the Fourth Circuit ruling is correct, individuals may not challenge the individual mandate until the first penalty is due in April 2015. On Tuesday, a dissenting judge on the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit also endorsed that position.
The administration had initially pressed but later abandoned the argument. In the Supreme Court, the Justice Department suggested that the court consider the issue and perhaps appoint a lawyer to present arguments in favor of it, as the court occasionally does when the parties agree on a significant issue that could alter the outcome of the eventual decision.
The justices will hear two hours of argument on whether Congress overstepped its constitutional authority, 90 minutes on whether the mandate may be severed from the balance of the law if Congress did go too far, and an hour each on the Medicaid and Anti-Injunction Act questions.
The Supreme Court agreed to hear three appeals, two from challengers to the law and a third from the Obama administration. The appeals involving the 26 states is known as Florida v. Department of Health and Human Services, No. 11-400. A second challenge, from a business group and two individuals, is called National Federation of Independent Business v. Sebelius, No. 11-393.

Mayank Shekhar's review: Rockstar

“Look at the great artistes, you’ll realise there’s one thing that’s common to all of them: pain.” Frustration, hurt, angst, struggles of all sorts

Imtiaz Ali's Rockstar is creating a lot of buzz. Be it Ranbir-Nargis' sizzling chemistry, AR Rahman's music or late Shammi Kapoor's guest appearance, there are many reasons to watch the film.

may have produced deranged humans; they’ve also brought to the world, genius in expression, art of all kinds. It’s a fair point; the one making it in this movie is someone called Khataraji. Intellect is best earned from the street. Khataraji is a college canteen manager, pot-bellied, mustachioed, wearing a thick hand-knitted sweater and talcum powder over his sweaty neck: basically, he looks like your average, lower middle-class, middle-aged Delhi male.

Khataraji takes a shine on one Janardhan Jakhar (Ranbir Kapoor), a talented musician. Having taken Khatara bhai’s sermons on art and pain a bit too seriously; lost, confused, mildly stupid, vaguely asexual Janardhan (JJ, in short, Jordan later) goes around looking to get frustrated!

He finds a gorgeous girl dancing at her college auditorium. She is, as the boys describe, a dil todne ki machine (surefire heartbreaker).” He pretends to fall for this upper-class Kashmiri girl (Nargis Fakhri), approaches her while she’s with friends; goes, “Tu hote lagti hai, cool bhi (you’re hot, cool)… I louv you, crazy for u baeby.” She asks him to bugger off, of course. Burger off, is what he hears. She’s from the supposedly posh St Stephen’s in Delhi. They were at the café. He goes back to his canteen, ‘across the road’ (Hindu College, relatively down-market. Okay Hinduites, I never said that. The film implies it!)

These two could never be a couple. Oddly, they do make for great friends. There’s a rebellious streak in this rich, protected, pretty girl. Though she’s about to get married. She finds in the rustic boy a mate who can accompany her to things that constitute “gandh machana (literally, stinking up)”: something that no Delhi girl should ideally attempt, like getting into a show of a laugh-porn Janglee Jawani in a shaggy, shabby theatre called Amar Talkies in Chandni Chowk, or thereabouts.

The girl gets married, moves on. The boy finds enough frustration in his life to produce expressive art, make finely layered music, is spotted by a shehnai ustad (Shammi Kapoor, in his final role, as Bismillah Khan). Janardhan is by now the incredibly famous (or infamous) Jordan, who packs stadiums, sells concert tickets, CDs, T-shirts, women faint at his appearance, paparazzi stalks him everywhere. A rock star? Hmmm.

A problem with Rock On (2008), for instance, though doubtlessly an entertaining film, was the music quartet there wasn't really a rock band. Severely low on rage against the machine, in their life, and with their music, they were at best a believable pop group. The hero here expresses that reckless, devil-may-care attitude better. The middle finger’s firmly in place, and pointed everywhere. To be fair still, there are no rock stars in India. It becomes a problem then to place this guy.

Film actors dancing, lip-syncing to playback music on television take over all sacred spaces of showbiz fame in this country. Everyone will remember Ranbir Kapoor in this movie. Some will know Mohit Chauhan, the brilliant voice, behind his character. As Bollywood hero though, Ranbir, for a change, deserves all the national attention. We haven’t quite come across a full-on Hindi film-star since Aamir Khan (26 years ago), Hrithik Roshan (11 years ago), who’s this competent, dedicated and original an actor. This movie rightly belongs to him. It neatly attempts to capture extreme fame, and its pitfalls: hungry crowds outside, hollowness and mental turmoil within. It could be seen as an Indian movie star’s story as well. The giddy fans they attract are about the same as rock-stars do in the West.

The hero goes back to his girl. If you've known someone long enough as a friend, it's probably best to let them remain just that. It may be a terrible idea in life to make out with your best buddy, if you’ve been platonic throughout, and especially, if they're married now! It's still decent enough conflict for a romantic film. This one flits between the study of fame, and a feminine, old-world Romeo And Juliet kind of romance of eternal love, right down to the balcony scene. The heroine is called Heer, obviously from the popular Punjabi tragic folktale Heer Ranjha. As it is with so many heroes’ journeys, important side-characters are unfortunately trashed to the bin: the leading man’s family's made irrelevant, so is the girl’s husband.

The canvas is wide like early Sanjay Leela Bhansali's; bird's eye view of the stunning bridge is very Mani Ratnam; witty, earthy dialogues are so Vishal Bhardwaj. Director Imitiaz Ali (Jab We Met, Love Aaj Kal) manages to retain a personal, auteur's touch in a genre vastly commercial, mainstream. This is a rare feat. From its start, to the way it progresses, you can tell, the film’s been through various stages of editing and several second thoughts. Sometimes the patchiness shows. It's a stretch. Anything that’s 18 reels long (close to three hours) in a flickering world of low attention spans would be. Something fizzles out towards the end. You still don't begrudge a movie that's been this engaging, entertaining thus far.

Oh, and did I forget. This is the best soundtrack of AR Rahman’s since Delhi 6 (early 2009). The compositions should grow on you. So should this film, surely.

Peter Jackson to direct Tintin sequelPeter Jackson to direct Tintin sequel

Ardent fans of the Steven Spielberg-Peter Jackson produced The Adventures of Tintin: The Secret of the Unicorn can rejoice, as a trilogy is reportedly in the offing; and helming the Part II will be The Lords of the Rings maker Jackson.We literally flipped a coin as to who would direct   

A children's bedside classic in much of Europe, the movie and its sequels by Lord of the Rings director Peter Jackson, look set to fire up sales of Tintin's 24 adventures from Tibet to the Moon that have left heirs to author, Herge, sitting pretty on a pot of gold.

the first film… eventually Steven became the director of the first one and then I’m set to direct the second one… we’re hoping to make as many as we can,” said the 50-year-old from New Zealand.

While the new flick is based on three of the comic books — The Crab with the Golden Claws, The Secret of the Unicorn, and Red Rackham’s Treasure; Jackson, already has other titles for the sequel in mind.

“There are a lot of great stories — The Seven Crystal Balls, Prisoners of the Sun is terrific; the Moon story (Destination Moon) and Tintin in Tibet. They’re all different — different places, different adventures and different tones,” says Jackson, who is a self-confessed fan of the whipped-hair scribe Tintin.

“I was eight or nine years  old when I read my first Tintin books and I’ve literally read them my entire life. You can read them over and over again. They always seem fresh,” Jackson said.

Gaga planning to adopt Indian kids?

Pop star Lady Gaga, who recently visited India, is reportedly planning to adopt three kids from an Indian orphanage and one from America.
                                                                        

The day she wears a plain dress Lady Gaga will definitely stun us all. Once again, in her dish antenna-like dress, the pop diva has not only won fans but many awards too at the MTV EMA ceremony. Check 'em all out!

Gaga has set up the not-for-profit group Born This Way Foundation to help people worldwide develop a new standard of care towards one
                                                       
"...She's already set up her Born This Way Foundation in India and visited two orphanages while she was there last time. The plan is to adopt three Indian orphans before adopting more from around the world. She wants at least one American child, too," dailystar.co.uk quoted a source as saying.
"She's always wanted to adopt, ever since she was a little girl. She tells friends she feels she was put on this planet for a reason and since achieving fame she sees it as a sign that she has to give back the good fortune she's received," the source added.

Political Fit Club: Presidents, politicians and world leaders work it out

Move over, Scott Brown - another Republican is reclaiming his title as the hottest congressman. And he's hoping to help cut down health-care costs along the way.

Illinois Rep. Aaron Schock opened his shirt on the cover of Men's Health to speak about his launch of a new fitness program, Fit for Summer, Fit for Life. It's designed to help Americans take control of their health - and cut down on health-care costs for the country - but the 29-year-old congressman's six-pack may be getting as much attention as his workout plan.

Check out the top presidents, politicians and world leaders working it out ...