The Olympic Stadium will be transformed into the British countryside for the Olympic Games opening ceremony, as seen in this model. Picture: Dave Poultney/LOCOG
Sarah Shaffi, Olympics editor (news)
Tuesday, June 12, 2012
10:43 AM
A “traditional and idyllic” view of the British countryside will greet audiences on entry to the Olympic Stadium for the opening ceremony of the Games.
The London Organising Committee of the Olympic and Paralympic Games (LOCOG) today announced that the field of play in the Stadium will be transformed into the rolling British countryside for the opening ceremony, which is titled Isles of Wonder.
Work has started on installing the set for the opening scene, called Green and Pleasant.
The set will include meadows, fields and rivers, and feature families taking picnics, sport being played on the village green and farmers tilling the soil whilst real farmyard animals graze – including 12 horses, three cows, two goats, 10 chickens, 10 ducks, nine geese, 70 sheep, and three sheep dogs.
Each of the four nations will be represented by their national flower – the rose of England, the thistle of Scotland, the daffodil of Wales and flax from Northern Ireland.
To coincide with the announcement Danny Boyle, artistic director of the London 2012 Olympic Games opening ceremony, paid tribute to the ceremony’s 10,000 volunteers, cast and crew rehearsing.
He said: “The ceremony is an attempt to capture a picture of ourselves as a nation, where we have come from and where we want to be.
“The best part of telling that story has been working with our 10,000 volunteers.
“I’ve been astounded by the selfless dedication of the volunteers, they are the purest embodiment of the Olympic spirit and represent the best of who we are as a nation.”
There have already been 157 cast rehearsals for the ceremony, with volunteer performers giving up evenings and weekends to take part in 37 rehearsals at the new site in Barking and Dagenham.
At 3 Mills Studios, the production base for the London 2012 Ceremonies Team, work is being completed on 12,956 props. Staff in the costume department are working hard to produce 23,000 costumes for all four ceremonies, including sewing 24,570 buttons onto the costumes for one of the opening sequences of the Olympic Games opening ceremony.
Work will soon begin to install the lighting for the ceremonies, which includes 1,100 automated lamps, 1,000 conventional lamps, 500 LED fixtures, and 32 follow spots.
This will be accompanied by a million watt sounds system using more than 500 speakers and 50 tonnes of associated sound gear.
Seb Coe, LOCOG chairman, said: “With only 45 days to go to the London 2012 Olympic Games opening ceremony one of the biggest sets ever built for a show is beginning to develop in the Olympic Stadium.
“With a worldwide TV audience of a billion people and a cast of over 10,000 talented volunteers, I’m sure that Danny’s ceremony will be a fantastic celebration that will welcome the 10,500 athletes from around the world and make our nation proud.”
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London 2012: Olympic Torch relay day 23 picture gallery
The Olympic Flame travelled to some of Scotland’s most northerly communities on day 23 of the relay.
Source: www.london24.com
London most expensive for night out - Jersey Evening Post
London is the most expensive city for an evening out, a cost comparison of the world’s major cities has revealed.
The capital tops the list in a cost comparison of an evening out for two people in key tourist cities around the world.
Hanoi in Vietnam offers the most affordable night out for British travellers, with a total cost of £89.93.
At more than triple the cost of Hanoi, London topped the list as most expensive with a cost of £330.45.
The TripAdvisor TripIndex is tracked against the British pound and is based on the combined costs for two people of one night in a four-star hotel, cocktails, a two-course dinner with a bottle of wine, and taxi fares.
“TripIndex helps travellers to see where their pound goes the furthest,” TripAdvisor spokeswoman Emma Shaw said. “The list shows that many Asian cities, along with some European cities – like Warsaw and Sofia – are very affordable once you’re on the ground.
“Some cities traditionally considered expensive – like London, Paris and New York – actually cost three times more than the cheaper cities in the list for an evening out.”
Hotel costs were the pivotal factor in determining the cheapest and most expensive cities on TripIndex.
The cheapest average hotel room goes to Bangkok at £51.68 per night, while the most expensive goes to London, at £230.39 per night.
Europe dominated the most expensive list with seven of the top 10 destinations, with London taking the top spot. Oslo, Zurich, Paris, Stockholm, Moscow and Copenhagen took second, third, fourth, fifth, seventh and eighth places respectively.
Source: www.thisisjersey.com
US healthcare spending to rise despite law - Financial Times
June 13, 2012 12:23 am
Source: www.ft.com
Techie held for duping girls - Times of India
HYDERABAD: Crime Investigation Department's (CID) Cyber Crime sleuths arrested an engineering graduate for duping over 30 girls by posing like an IIT graduate working for Microsoft. To lure unmarried girls, he had posted his profile on a matrimonial site 'Shaadi.com' with fake credentials.
Police arrested Bojjanki Ravi Kishore of Miyapur. According to police, Ravi Kishore finished B Tech from Visakhapatnam a few years ago and later worked in BPOs in the Steel City and Bangalore. As he was unemployed since last one year, he shifted base to Miyapur. During this time, he uploaded a fake profile on the matrimonial site Shaadi.com claiming that he finished B Tech from IIT, Powai and then did MS from University of California. Ravi Kishore also claimed that he was currently working as a software engineer with Microsoft in Gachibowli.
By seeing his profile, several unmarried women came in contact with him and he began luring them into his trap.
In this manner, the fraudster became close to 54 women and then he slowly began extracting money from them by telling his sob stories. "Kishore used to say that his father is undergoing surgery or his mother met with an accident. By listening to his sob stories, several girls gave money to him," additional SP U Rammohan said.
Most of the women he trapped were software engineers or professionals from other fields. With his sob stories, Kishore extracted about Rs 12 lakh from 22 girls in the last one year. He even sexually exploited several girls, the officer said.
However, some victims became suspicious as Kishore began avoiding them and during the subsequent interrogation, some of them realised that he was not an employee of Microsoft.
On June 7, an architect from the city, who was duped by him, lodged a complaint with the Cyber Crime police. According to police, he lured her family and their marriage was also fixed. Based on the complaint, police booked a case under the IT Act and arrested Kishore in Masab Tank when he landed there to meet a friend on Monday night.
Police seized a mobile phone and a laptop from him and produced him before court on Tuesday.
Source: timesofindia.indiatimes.com
Q&A: Who are internet trolls - and how is the law changing? - BBC News
Website operators in the UK may soon have to identify people who have posted defamatory messages online, allowing the victim to undertake legal action against the "troll" rather than against the website.
But who are these people and how will this proposed new law be different from the current regulations?
Who are the internet trolls?The term has come to mean those behind intentionally provocative online actions intended to cause grief or incite an angry response.
This can happen in online forums, message boards, chat rooms, and on social networks and microblogging sites, as well as personal emails.
Trolls may exist in any online community that allows comments from users - for example, video-streaming sites, such as YouTube and online video-games sites.
They can act individually or in groups - known as "colluding" trolls. One member of such a group often behaves as the obvious troll, while the others disguise themselves as normal members of the online community.
These trolls in disguise then defend the comments of the overt one.
Trolls may also target the recently bereaved, posting offensive material about the dead person.
After 17-year-old Charlotte Porter died in 2010, her parents said that her memory had been "destroyed" by abusive online messages on her Facebook memorial site.
One of the latest examples of an internet troll is Frank Zimmerman, who was given a 26-week suspended prison sentence after sending an offensive email to Corby MP Louise Mensch.
He was also banned from contacting a host of celebrities, including Lord Sugar.
“Start Quote
End Quote Emma Draper Head of communications at Privacy InternationalThere is a concern that gun-shy website operators will start automatically divulging user details the moment someone alleges defamation”
Currently, a website operator is liable for everything that appears on its site.
So if somebody believes that something defamatory has been written about them online, he or she may have to take the website to court for redress, incurring huge costs.
Justice Secretary Ken Clarke explained: "As the law stands, individuals can be the subject of scurrilous rumour and allegation on the web with little meaningful remedy against the person responsible.
"Website operators are in principle liable as publishers for everything that appears on their sites, even though the content is often determined by users.
"But most operators are not in a position to know whether the material posted is defamatory or not and very often - faced with a complaint - they will immediately remove material."
How might the new law be different?The UK Ministry of Justice is proposing a defamation bill, which is being debated in the Commons, to make it easier for people to challenge what has been written about them.
If people think that there is defamatory content being posted about them online, instead of taking action against the website where the information appears, they can ask the website operator to give them the name of the person who posted the remarks.
This way, they can take legal action against trolls directly, requiring them to remove the defamatory posts.
"Our proposed approach will give greater protection to operators of websites who comply with a procedure to identify the authors of allegedly defamatory material," said Justice Secretary Ken Clarke.
"The government wants a libel regime for the internet that makes it possible for people to protect their reputations effectively but also ensures that information online can't be easily censored by casual threats of litigation against website operators.
"It will be very important to ensure that these measures do not inadvertently expose genuine whistleblowers, and we are committed to getting the detail right to minimise this risk."
The BBC understands that the term "troll" will not figure in the bill, and the new law will only refer to "defamatory" content.
Which sites would be covered by the rule change?The proposals would apply to all websites, regardless of which country their servers or headquarters were based.
However, the claimant would need to be able to show that the UK was the appropriate place to bring the action.
What about privacy?Privacy International, an organisation that campaigns at an international level on privacy issues, says that "there is a concern that gun-shy website operators will start automatically divulging user details the moment someone alleges defamation in order to shield themselves from libel actions".
"A great deal of the content posted by internet trolls is not actually defamatory, instead constituting harassment, invasion of privacy or simply unpleasant but lawfully expressed opinion," Emma Draper, head of communications at Privacy International, told BBC News.
"However, if the choice is between protecting users' anonymity and avoiding a potentially costly lawsuit, many small operators are not going to be overly concerned about whether or not a user has genuinely defamed the complainant."
Source: www.bbc.co.uk
The marriage of church and state is anything but gay - The Guardian
The relationship was never on. The two of them hated each other and bickered from the start. There have been rows, bust-ups, trial separations and expensive lawyers, but they are irreconcilable. It is time to call a halt. The marriage of England's church and state is anything but gay.
Henry VIII's leadership of the church made sense at the time. It freed England from the religious bonds of Rome. But 1535 is not 2012. This week's Home Office document on gay marriage proposes that same-sex civil partnerships be called marriages, like the others. We can ask why, at these of all times, David Cameron should want to stir this episcopal hornets' nest. He apparently has debts to pay the gay community. But he is adamant for change, insisting at the same time that "no religious organisation will be forced to conduct same-sex marriages". They will be legally exempt.
If any proof were needed for church disestablishment, it is the capacity of canon lawyers to find quarrels in straws. What consenting adults do in private should be of no concern to governments, and that applies to worship as much as sex. If grownups want to dress in Tudor costume, douse babies in water, intone over the dead and do strange things with wine and wafers, it is a free country. But for a Christian sect to claim ownership of the legal definition of a human relationship is way out of order.
The church has a dreadful record on marriage. Rome placed chastity and celibacy as the highest state of man (and woman), while marriage was for the fallen. As Milton said, the church regarded matrimony as a state of disgrace, "a work of the flesh, almost a defilement". Only when medieval bishops saw where the money was did they declare marriage "so sacramental that no adultery or desertion could dissolve it".
Throughout the middle ages the church struggled to gain control of what had been an essentially secular contract between men and women. It was not until the 13th century that weddings had to be hallowed by a priest, even if this meant little more than an exchange of vows in a porch. Churches tried to bribe couples to the altar, as by giving them sides of bacon (hence "bringing home the bacon"). Common law marriage in England was not outlawed until 1753.
The current argument over gay marriage is near incomprehensible, except in terms of Anglican conservatism. All sexes can now be legally wed in registered premises and call themselves married. The word has changed its usage to embrace them. Gay people are now demanding the social status of "marrieds" and, more controversially, that the church be allowed to marry under licence.
The first demand is for lexicographers and seems harmless. The second is a matter between gay people and the church authorities. The government is not insisting on anything. It is specifically providing for churches to be exempt from any requirement of access for gay people. Yet the church seems desperate for a fight. It behaves like an elephant bitten by a gnat.
Given that only a quarter of weddings take place in Anglican churches, the number of gay couples wanting such a service must be small. Some churches already "bless" gay civil partnerships, as they do divorcees. Yet the church's lawyers claim that any exemption "could be challenged" by some litigious and theologically apostate homosexual under the European convention on human rights.
Anything these days can be challenged, but such a case is unlikely to prevail, given the convention's defence of religious freedom. The church has long refused to marry divorcees, and a local church can deny marriage to those with no parochial connection. I am not aware of any being dragged to a European court by irate suitors.
Canon lawyers protest that, even so, exemption would create a conflict between "separate categories" of civil and religious marriage. That is a difference, not a conflict, and hardly more terrible, as "senior church figures" tell the Daily Telegraph, than "any rift since the reign of Henry VIII".
This difference arises only because the Anglican church has long enjoyed a peculiar legal privilege of being able to register weddings in its own buildings. But such ritualising of a legal contract can now can take place in most stately homes. The church may moan about an offence to family tradition, but given its casual readiness to marry the absurdly young, it is hardly an ideal matrimonial counsellor. As for its complaint that gay marriage "raises the sort of problems that no one has had to address before", it should try joining the 21st century.
The church has been on the reactionary side in almost every political and social reform of the past two centuries. It opposed popular enfranchisement, secular schooling, easier divorce and legalised homosexuality. It continues to defy the law on gender equality in respect of bishops. This may be lovably fuddy-duddy to some, but the claim to parliamentary and legal privilege is an anachronism.
The government is proposing no more than to remove what in secular and civil terms is a terminological distinction between men and women. If the church wants to make this a Thomas Becket issue, that is its affair. The issue should not condition the action of government.
The Anglican church emerges from this row as absurdly pedantic. It wants to sustain an antique religious bond to a modern democratic state, with the outrageous claim that this should be a partnership of equals. The days when bishops could deny the franchise to Irish Catholics or demand a veto over the 1944 Education Act are over.
The government has honestly tried to meet theological objections to "marrying" gay couples through exemption. The church may fear a quarrel with the human rights lobby, but that is not the state's business. The only alternative is to strip the church of its special licence to register weddings altogether, and have done with "by law established".
The church has kept its 16th-century status for years by ducking and weaving whenever the going gets rough. It will presumably do so again. The government should take at face value the bishops' claim that gay marriage "snips the thread" between church and state, and toss establishment into the bin.
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Source: www.guardian.co.uk
Florida debates 'Stand Your Ground' law - msnbc.com
Nineteen members of a state commission are meeting Tuesday to discuss the issue – just a short distance from where 17-year-old Trayvon Martin was shot and killed by 28-year-old George Zimmerman.
It's believed Zimmerman’s defense attorney will rely of Florida’s controversial law to prove he did no wrong that February evening in Sanford.
Trayvon Martin’s mother, Sabrina Fulton, is among those arguing Florida’s law should be changed. But she's also made it a point to try to calm proponents of the Second Amendment, which protects the right of people to keep and bear arms, who feel any change to the law is an attack on their rights.
Shellie Zimmerman, wife of Trayvon Martin killer, arrested on perjury charge
"I grew up with a weapon in my house. My dad was a police officer. I have nothing against guns,” Fulton said on Tuesday.
She was among a group who presented the state commission with more than 300,000 signatures demanding the law be repealed.
"I have nothing against the law,” she said. “It's how it's applied."
The Florida law was passed in 2005 and was signed into law by then-Gov. Jeb Bush. The law came into being in the wake of Hurricane Ivan – partly because of the case of James Workman.
Workman, a 77-year-old retiree at the time, and his wife, Kathryn, had survived Hurricane Ivan, but their house in Pensacola was badly damaged, so they were staying in a trailer nearby. In the middle of the night, a FEMA worker from North Carolina, Rodney Cox, mysteriously appeared in their RV. Workman shot and killed the intruder.
After months in legal limbo, no charges were filed against Workman. Lawmakers seized on his case as they pressed for the country’s first Stand Your Ground law.
See more msnbc.com coverage of the Trayvon Martin case
Workman, now 84, recently spoke to NBC News from his home in Pensacola and defended the controversial law.
"The law may not be perfect; I’m not saying it’s perfect. But it’s a whole lot better than not having a law,” said Workman. "You got to have some way of protecting yourself. I mean, I just – I don’t see anything wrong with that, at all."
Key events in the Trayvon Martin case
The commission will not affect a change to the law, but it plans to offer the results of its six statewide meetings to Florida Gov. Rick Scott and the state Legislature.
If the law were to be amended or revoked, it would not be until 2013, when the Legislature returns for its lawmaking session.
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Follow US News on msnbc.com on Twitter and Facebook
Source: usnews.msnbc.msn.com
Undoing health law could have messy ripple effects - The Guardian
RICARDO ALONSO-ZALDIVAR
Associated Press= WASHINGTON (AP) — It sounds like a silver lining. Even if the Supreme Court overturns President Barack Obama's health care law, employers can keep offering popular coverage for the young adult children of their workers.
But here's the catch: The parents' taxes would go up.
That's only one of the messy potential ripple effects when the Supreme Court delivers its verdict on the Affordable Care Act this month. The law affects most major components of the U.S. health care system in its effort to extend coverage to millions of uninsured people.
Because the legislation is so complicated, an orderly unwinding would prove difficult if it were overturned entirely or in part.
Better Medicare prescription benefits, currently saving hundreds of dollars for older people with high drug costs, would be suspended. Ditto for preventive care with no co-payments, now available to retirees and working families alike.
Partially overturning the law could leave hospitals, insurers and other service providers on the hook for tax increases and spending cuts without the law's promise of more paying customers to offset losses.
If the law is upheld, other kinds of complications could result.
The nation is so divided that states led by Republicans are largely unprepared to carry out critical requirements such as creating insurance markets. Things may not settle down.
"At the end of the day, I don't think any of the major players in the health insurance industry or the provider community really wants to see the whole thing overturned," said Christine Ferguson, a health policy expert who was commissioner of public health in Massachusetts when Mitt Romney was governor.
"Even though this is not the most ideal solution, at least it is moving us forward, and it does infuse some money into the system for coverage," said Ferguson, now at George Washington University. As the GOP presidential candidate, Romney has pledged to wipe Obama's law off the books. But he defends his Massachusetts law that served as a prototype for Obama's.
While it's unclear how the justices will rule, oral arguments did not go well for the Obama administration. The central issue is whether the government can require individuals to have health insurance and fine them if they don't.
That mandate takes effect in 2014, at the same time that the law would prohibit insurance companies from denying coverage to people with existing health problems. Most experts say the coverage guarantee would balloon costs unless virtually all people joined the insurance pool.
Opponents say Congress overstepped its constitutional authority by issuing the insurance mandate. The administration says the requirement is permissible because it serves to regulate interstate commerce. Most people already are insured. The law provides subsidies to help uninsured middle-class households pay premiums and expands Medicaid to pick up more low-income people.
The coverage for young adults up to age 26 on a parent's health insurance is a popular provision that no one's arguing about. A report last week from the Commonwealth Fund estimated that 6.6 million young adults have taken advantage of the benefit, while a new Gallup survey showed the uninsured rate for people age 18-25 continues to decline, down to 23 percent from 28 percent when the law took effect.
Families will be watching to see if their 20-somethings transitioning to the work world will get to keep that newfound security.
Because the benefit is a winner with consumers, experts say many employers and insurers would look for ways to keep offering it even if there's no legal requirement to do so. On Monday, UnitedHealth Group Inc., the nation's largest insurer, is announcing that it will continue to offer coverage to young adults even if the health care law is struck down.
But economist Paul Fronstin of the Employee Benefit Research Institute says many parents would pay higher taxes as a result because they would have to pay for the young adult's coverage with after-tax dollars. Under the health care law, that coverage now comes out of pre-tax dollars.
Fronstin says there's no way to tell exactly how much that tax increase might be, but a couple of hundred dollars a year or more is a reasonable ballpark estimate. Upper-income taxpayers would have a greater liability.
"Adult children aren't necessarily dependents for tax purposes, but an employer can allow anyone to be on a plan, just like they now allow domestic partners," said Fronstin. "If your employer said, 'I'm going to let you keep this,' it would become a taxable benefit for certain people."
Advocates for the elderly are also worried about untoward ripple effects.
If the entire law is overturned, seniors with high prescription costs in Medicare's "donut hole" coverage gap could lose annual discounts averaging about $600. AARP policy director David Certner says he would hope the discounts could remain in place at least through the end of this year.
Yet that might not be possible. Lacking legal authority, Medicare would have to take away the discounts. Drugmakers, now bearing the cost, could decide they want to keep offering discounts voluntarily. But then they'd risk running afoul of other federal rules that bar medical providers from offering financial inducements to Medicare recipients.
"I don't think anyone has any idea," said Certner.
A mixed verdict from the high court would be the most confusing outcome. Some parts of the law would be struck down while others lurch ahead.
That kind of result would seem to call for Congress to step in and smooth any necessary adjustments. Yet partisan divisions on Capitol Hill are so intense that hardly anyone sees a chance that would happen this year.
Source: www.guardian.co.uk
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