Bankruptcy judge in Vegas OKs Newton estate deal

LAS VEGAS (AP) ? A federal bankruptcy judge signed off on a sealed agreement that resulted in "Mr. Las Vegas" Wayne Newton moving from his sprawling "Casa de Shenandoah" property after 45 years.

Newton family members and attorneys weren't in court Friday while U.S. Bankruptcy Judge Bruce Markell accepted the plan submitted by lawyers for new property owner CSD LLC.

Landowner Lacy Harber says he still plans to open a tourist attraction on the 40-acre estate that Newton named "Casa de Shenandoah."

Harber isn't saying whether the Newtons will be involved.

Harber bought the property in June 2010 for $19.5 million with plans to open a "Graceland West" attraction commemorating the "Danke Schoen" crooner's show biz career.

Newton, his family and their menagerie of exotic animals moved this month to another nearby property.

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/bankruptcy-judge-vegas-oks-newton-estate-deal-181712154.html

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With Google Reader Nearly Dead, Feedly Launches Its Own Cloud Platform

Feedly launches a standalone web version of Feedly and the Feedly Cloud, a backend platform that will support all of your RSS feeds and provide an open API for app developers to tap into.

Source: http://www.wired.com/gadgetlab/2013/06/feedly-cloud/

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AP PHOTOS: Bangladesh collapse left many amputees

SAVAR, Bangladesh (AP) ? It was the worst disaster in the history of the garment industry. When the Rana Plaza factory building crashed down in April, 1,129 people were killed. But many others had to sacrifice their limbs to survive.

Arms and legs were trapped under the building rubble, forcing rescuers with no medical training to perform amputations on the spot to free the victims. No anesthesia was available. Some of the rescuers used butchers knives or hacksaws to cut through the flesh and save the trapped workers. Many of those freed are still recovering.

Laboni, 21, worked on the fourth floor. Her left arm was amputated to free her from the rubble, 36 hours after the building collapsed. Shahi Noor, 25, worked on the sixth floor. Her right leg was cut off to free her on the day of the collapse.

Bangladesh's government and garment manufacturers are campaigning to close dangerous factories and to make safety a priority for the country's most valuable export industry. But many in the government, the industry and the rescue workers said they would not be shocked if another terrible tragedy happened.

Here's a gallery of images from Savar, Bangladesh.

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/ap-photos-bangladesh-collapse-left-many-amputees-064756261.html

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Director Costa-Gavras: European cinema could not survive without state protection

By Steve Pond

LOS ANGELES (TheWrap.com) - Filmmaking could not exist in Europe without the support of governments, veteran director Costa-Gavras told an audience at the Los Angeles Film Festival on Monday night.

At the same time, the Greek director of such politically-charged films as "Missing" and the Oscar-winning "Z," said that he supports French exclusionary laws that limit the amount of American television that can be shown on the air.

"If the state doesn't help, cinema cannot survive in Europe," the 80-year-old director said in a conversation with "The Hurt Locker" and "Zero Dark Thirty" screenwriter Mark Boal prior to a screening of his new film "Capital."

When Boal asked Costa-Gavras' about the seeming contradiction of his support for the French regulations and his earlier comment during the session that "the state is an enemy," the director shrugged it off. He traced the need to restrict American content to the World War II era, when the French film industry was crippled by the Nazi occupation.

"When France was liberated, hundreds of American movies came to France and took over," he said.

Given how strong American cultural influence is today, he supports the right of European governments to promote homegrown art and control imported culture.

"When a French person goes to trial, they call the head of the court ?Mr. President,'" he said. "But now, more and more they call him ?your honor,' because they've seen so many American serials."

Costa-Gavras' new film, which stars Gabriel Byrne and French comedian Gad Elmaleh, is the 21st in a career that began when the filmmaker left Greece in the early 1950s for France, where he studied literature at the Sorbonne but became interested in film when his friends took him to see works like Erich von Stroheim's "Greed."

He would have gone to the United States to study, he said on Monday, but he wasn't allowed to go there because his father, a member of the Greek resistance during the war, was imprisoned afterwards as a suspected communist. (He has relatives in the U.S., including film director Penelope Spheeris, who is his cousin.)

In the hour-long conversation with Boal, the director summed up his attitude this way: "The role of art is to make visible what is not visible in society."

He also agreed with Boal's description of him as "a political filmmaker," adding, "You are one, too."

Boal resisted Costa-Gavras' attempts to bring "The Hurt Locker" and "Zero Dark Thirty" into the conversation, though it wasn't hard to conclude that his own experiences with those films led to questions like the one he asked about criticism that generally follows politically-pointed work: "Do you feel a responsibility to defend your films against attacks?"

Costa-Gavras avoided that question, turning it into a criticism of movies like the "Rambo" flicks that found Sylvester Stallone wading into Southeast Asia to rescue lost POWs. "If you show that a guy with his muscles can win the Vietnam War," said Costa-Gavras, "then you have a responsibility there, because the young people can believe you."

He also said he felt a responsibility to talk about his movies, because it's cheaper and more effective than buying advertisements. "If I come to Los Angeles and do an interview with the Los Angeles Times, I get a third of a page," he said. "If I don't, I get a small ad and it costs five thousand bucks."

Money was very much on Costa-Gavras' mind at LAFF, because "Capital" (below) is a film about money. A dark, blunt, stylish and sometimes overheated look at a newly-crowned CEO whose bank becomes entangled with a large American company seeking to manipulate markets and make billions while destroying a few companies and a few thousand lives, it was based on a book that predated the world financial crisis.

"For 10 years, I to do a movie about money," he said. "I found a book I liked very much. the world crisis arrived, I didn't have to change anything.

"It's probably one of the first movies I've made that I would like the audience at the end to be disturbed."

"Speaking of money," asked Boal, "if I find you the money, would you make another movie in America?"

"Yes," said Costa-Gavras immediately.

After the Q&A, TheWrap asked Boal if he was seriously going to try to raise money. The Oscar-winning screenwriter and producer shrugged, but his eyes lit up.

"If I did, wouldn't it be cool?" he said.

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/director-costa-gavras-european-cinema-could-not-survive-230350904.html

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Clarence Thomas, Liberal

Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas sometimes sides with the liberal justices in decisions. Why?

Photo by Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images

Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas is frequently accused of being a partisan hack, a conservative lackey serving only the interests of the Republican Party. His votes are often portrayed as products of political ideology rather than constitutional philosophy, a practice he only encourages with his forays into political commentary. But as his recent opinions in Alleyne v. United States and the Myriad gene-patenting case illustrate, Thomas is much more than a Tea Party mouthpiece. That his views skew conservative is a product not of partisanship but rather of his deep, occasionally confounding dedication to originalist theory. And sometimes that dedication leads this already idiosyncratic justice to cast votes that would please Earl Warren.

Consider Alleyne, a case that deals with the classic liberal bugaboo of mandatory minimum sentences. Most progressives oppose them because they feel they?re racist; a law that raised the mandatory minimum for crack 100 times higher than for powder cocaine, for instance, affected the black community disproportionately.

But for Thomas?who vehemently rejects the notion that blacks are frequently disadvantaged by the legal system?mandatory minimums have nothing to do with race. They have to do with the Sixth Amendment?s guarantee of a jury trial. Thus, in Alleyne (in an opinion authored by Thomas), the court found that any aspect of conviction that contributes toward a mandatory minimum must be specifically proven to the jury. Allen Ryan Alleyne was convicted only of having ?used or carried a firearm? in relation to a violent crime, which carries a five-year mandatory minimum. But the sentencing judge decided that Alleyne had, in fact, ?brandished? a firearm?a graver crime that carries a seven-year mandatory minimum. In Thomas? eyes, that distinction is for a jury, not a judge, to make, and so Alleyne?s conviction must be vacated.

To careful observers, Thomas? ruling should not come as a shock. The justice has consistently defended criminal defendants? rights, sometimes to a greater degree than his liberal colleagues. (In these rulings, he is intermittently joined by Scalia, who once labeled himself ?the darling of the criminal defense bar.?) Thomas is a strong defender of the Confrontation Clause of the Sixth Amendment, which guarantees that ?in all criminal prosecutions, the accused shall enjoy the right ... to be confronted with the witnesses against him.? In the 21^st century, though, even a minor crime can have a lot of witnesses, and so the court?s conservatives?plus the unpredictable Breyer?have decided that, contra the Confrontation Clause, maybe a few accusatory witnesses can be let off the hook.

That doesn?t fly with Thomas, who provided the court?s fifth vote in 2011?s landmark Bullcoming v. New Mexico. In that case, the court overturned the conviction of a man accused of drunk driving, finding that he had been deprived the right to confront in court the lab technician who tested his blood alcohol level. To Breyer and the conservatives, putting a mere lab technician on the stand is nothing more than a burdensome technicality. But to Thomas, it?s a vital guarantee of America?s founding document.

Thomas is also a consistent protector of private property. (Personal privacy, on the other hand, he gives shorter shrift.) In 2001?s Kyllo v. U.S., Thomas joined Scalia and three liberals in ruling that the use of thermal imaging constitutes a Fourth Amendment ?search? and thus requires a warrant. (In another instance of scrambled ideology, John Paul Stevens wrote the dissent in that case.) And just this term, in Florida v. Jardines, a similar split found Thomas successfully defending Americans against a warrantless home visit by a drug-sniffing dog.

Thomas? record on free speech is spottier. He?s voted against First Amendment protections for lies, symbolic speech, public employees, minors, and prisoners. But Thomas is a fierce First Amendment warrior on one issue: pornography. Thomas has voted several times against regulations designed to prevent minors from accessing porn on the Internet, and voted to ensure that ?indecent? sexual material remains accessible to all adults on cable. He?s even supported Americans? right to view and produce simulated child pornography. And early in his tenure, Thomas joined the liberal bloc in overturning the conviction of a man entrapped in a child-pornography sting.

All of these votes arise from the same philosophy that drives Thomas to rule for unlimited and anonymous corporate electioneering, astonishingly torturous methods of capital punishment, and the deprivation of gay people?s rights. More than any justice in history, Thomas is an originalist, ruling exclusively by the letter of what he views as the Founders? original intent in writing the Constitution. Because the Founders, for example, condoned ?public dissection? and the ?embowelling [sic] alive, beheading, and quartering? of prisoners, so too does Thomas. But because, in Thomas? view, the Founders felt Americans had a right to view graphic sexual material, we still hold that right today. Liberal justices attempt to apply the Constitution?s strictures to the present, adapting its liberties to the needs of modern society. When society proposes a new liberty, like a right to be gay, Thomas rejects it out of hand. But when it begins to encroach on an old one?private property, for instance?Thomas emerges as a defender of freedom.

There?s no freedom Thomas treasures more than the freedom of states to diverge from the federal government. But even Thomas? hard-core Federalist beliefs can bring him over to the liberal side from time to time. In Gonzales v. Raich, Thomas ruled that the federal government cannot outlaw marijuana grown and sold exclusively in California. (This view found him in disagreement with even Scalia, whose hostility toward drugs apparently eclipses his love of Federalism.) In Wyeth v. Levine, Thomas held that a woman who lost her hand to gangrene due to an improperly labeled medication could sue under state law even when the pharmaceutical company was shielded by federal law. And in Williamson v. Mazda Motors of America, Thomas penned a stirring defense of seat belt legislation, arguing that a state?s strict safety regulations trumped laxer federal ones. Given Thomas? dedication to states? rights no matter the cause, some commentators see him as a potential vote for overturning the states? rights?trampling Defense of Marriage Act.

On the whole, of course, Thomas remains a rock-ribbed conservative, and the surprise that greeted his opinion in Alleyne and last week?s DNA-patenting case is entirely understandable. But just because Thomas? votes track a generally right-wing pattern does not mean they are preordained by party politics, or even predictable. The principles Thomas follows?unwavering dedication to his own interpretation of the ideas of dead men?may not make much sense to most. But they are principles nonetheless. And Thomas remains dedicated to them, no matter how far left they take him.

Source: http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/jurisprudence/2013/06/clarence_thomas_s_liberal_rulings_how_the_supreme_court_justice_s_originalism.html

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New Android apps worth downloading: eBay update, The Car Connection, Rage of the Gladiator

Today's apps worth downloading start with a couple that might help you save, or make, some money. First is an update to eBay, the online auction site whose app has gotten lots of new features and refinements for sellers to make their stuff available to buyers. Up next is The Car Connection, an app with tons of info for finding the right car for you. Finally, Rage of the Gladiator puts you in the shoes of a warrior fighting off monsters, magicians and more in a first-person action game.

eBay update (Free)

What?s it about? Get access to online auction site eBay and all its features for buyers and sellers with its Android app.

What?s cool? eBay is a great way to buy and sell stuff that's harder to come by in traditional stores (or just that you want or don't want, as the case may be), and its Android app makes the process easy even if you're away from your computer. You can search for items, make bids, complete transactions and do anything else you might as a buyer, including messaging sellers. On the sales side, eBay lets you monitor your auctions, interact with buyers, and post listings easily with photos from your Android device. The app's new update adds tablet support and brings a new layout to the seller experience, and throws in new preview options and the like for when you're setting up your listings.

Who?s it for? If you ever use eBay for buying and selling, the Android app is a must to keep on top of all your auctions.

What?s it like? Get eBay's RedLaser app for barcode comparison capabilities.

What?s it about? Research and shop for cars wherever you are with The Car Connection, which brings the experience of its website to your Android device.

What?s cool? If you're in the market for a new car, The Car Connection is an app that can help you. It's filled with information about different brands of cars, including reviews that give you an idea as to their quality and specs. The Car Connection includes info about tons of car brands, makes and models, and includes full reviews as well as snapshot information to help you make your decisions, and images to help as well. The app also pipes in news coverage from the auto industry and can connect you with local dealerships when you're ready to go shop.

Who?s it for? Anyone in the market for a new car who wants to make an informed decision should check out The Car Connection.

What?s it like? Grab Autotrader.com and Cars.com for more info, reviews and comparisons.

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What?s it about? First-person action game Rage of the Gladiator sees players battling against a host of enemies in the arena, taking down each with a number of different kinds of attacks.

What?s cool? Rage of the Gladiator sees you step into an arena armed with your wits, a warhammer and a shield, and tasked with beating back various foes of a magical persuasion. Each battle throws a new foe your way, and you'll need to make use of your defenses and tactical movements in order to defeat them. As you play, you'll gain new abilities and moves, like magic spells and high-powered attacks to use against your enemies.

Who?s it for? Fans of action games with high-quality graphics and production values will enjoy Rage of the Gladiator.

What?s it like? Other solid action games include Wild Blood and The Dark Knight Rises.

Download the Appolicious Android app

Source: http://www.androidapps.com/tech/articles/13540-new-android-apps-worth-downloading-ebay-update-the-car-connection-rage-of-the-gladiator

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