'Pitch Perfect' takes away two Golden Popcorns at the 2013 MTV Movie Awards.
By Driadonna Roland
Rebel Wilson and Zac Efron at the 2013 MTV Movie Awards
Photo: Kevin Mazur/ WireImage
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Chinese authorities have closed some live bird markets in an attempt to stop the spread of a deadly strain of bird flu. A vendor, above, washed a chicken stall in a poultry market in Hefei, China, shortly before it was due to be closed Thursday.
By Li Le and Ian Johnston, NBC News
BEIJING -- It began in late February when an 87-year-old man started coughing up phlegm. A high fever followed, he struggled to breathe and was dead just 13 days later.
His death in Shanghai, China, was one of 13 fatalities out of 41 known cases to date of a new form of bird flu that experts warn may pose a "serious human health risk."
On Saturday, China's center for disease control announced the first case in Beijing, and outside of eastern China. The seven-year-old girl, whose parents work in the live poultry trade, was stable in a hospital in the capital, media reports said.
Around the world, scientists are now beginning to examine samples of the virus with a significant question in mind: Could this strain of the disease cause a global pandemic?
This international network of scientists keeps constant watch for good reason.
In 1918 and 1919, a flu pandemic killed between 20 million and 40 million people, more than the total death toll of World War I, more in a year than the Black Death of 1347 to 1351. More recently, an H1N1 swine flu pandemic?was blamed for more than 284,500 human deaths worldwide between April 2009 and August 2010.
So far, the signs are that this is a localized outbreak. The number of cases is low and the virus -- an H7N9 strain -- does not appear to be capable of jumping from one person to another.
But each case represents a chance for the virus to mutate into one that is highly infectious in humans. And it is an unusual strain -- normally avian diseases make birds sick first, giving an early warning sign, but this one does not.
More than 1,000 dead ducks have been fished out of a river Sichuan, China. The discovery comes as the country deals with anger over the dumping of over 16,000 pigs elsewhere in China. NBCNews.com's Dara Brown reports.
Scientists have established it is from an "avian reservoir" but still don't know the precise source. Chinese officials have dismissed suggestions of a connection with the large number of dead pigs and other animals found recently in rivers.
Many in China are understandably worried, with some deciding to avoid eating chicken, even though it poses no threat if properly cooked.
KFC?s parent company Yum reported on Wednesday that sales in its Chinese restaurants had dropped by 13 percent in March, saying ?publicity associated with avian flu in China has had a significant, negative impact.?
Even Jiangsu Zoo, just north of Shanghai, reportedly stopped feeding chicken to animals such as lions and tigers and started giving them a traditional medicinal herb called ban lan gen.
Xie Li, an accountant in Shanghai, admitted she was ?kind of nervous.?
?Now, we only eat vegetables," she said. "My daughter's school is measuring students' temperatures. We were told that we should eat less eggs or not touch eggs because they might have some excrement from chickens."
But others in the city of 23 million people were more sanguine.
A farm in China has admitted to dumping more than 6,000 pigs corpses into Shanghai's Huangpu River, according to China's official Xinhua news agency. NBCNews.com's Alex Witt reports.
Yan Zhanlin, a 40-year-old businessman, said he was ?not scared, because there are not many cases, and the number of deaths is not high? and the virus had not yet spread between people.
?Today, I went to a train station, and I only saw few people wearing masks,? he said.
But even he said he had stopped eating ?poultry, pork and other meat.?
Tang, a company manager in his late 20s, who declined to give his full name, was also relatively unconcerned.
?I do not fear [the virus] at all. It is just a kind of flu, and will pass quickly,? he said. Avoiding poultry was ?not too bad, because it forces us to eat vegetables and fish, which are nutritious,? he added.
'Watching very carefully'
Perhaps in a sign of the country's nervousness, People's Liberation Army Colonel Dai Xu claimed the U.S. was behind the outbreak, saying the U.S. had used "bio-psychological weapons" to cause the deadly 2003 Sars outbreak and the current flu one, The South China Morning Post reported.
Such allegations aside, this apparently local problem is being treated seriously on a global scale.
Samples of the virus ? or non-infectious nucleic acid from it ? are being sent to scientists in up to 140 national influenza centers recognized by the World Health Organization, including the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Work has already started in the U.S. to make a vaccine against the new strain -- just in case.
Scientist John McCauley, of the U.K.?s National Institute for Medical Research, received his consignment on Thursday.
?We?re watching very carefully the events there [in China] because we are aware although there?s no human-to-human transmission, these are unusual infections people have been getting from an avian reservoir,? he said.
?China will need to identify the source and hopefully be able to control the cross-species transmission,? he said. ?We?re watching very carefully to see how it does.?
The outbreak of a new strain of bird flu has now infected at least 18 people, and killed six in China. NBC's Robert Bazell reports.
?In the meantime, the national influenza centers around the world are developing their ability to detect this newly emerging virus? and also working on vaccines, McCauley said.
Experts needed to find out how vaccines would perform ?in case this virus becomes pandemic,? he said.
Coincidentally, John Oxford, a professor of virology and an expert on the 1918 flu pandemic, was in Shanghai about eight weeks ago -- roughly the same time that the elderly man first fell ill ? for a meeting about hygiene, important in the fight against viruses such as flu.
He said the situation in China was ?getting a little more worrying.?
?I don?t like the sound of it. Every day I open up the reports and find out someone else has died,? he said. ?I just don?t like to see the figures going up day after day.?
?So far there?s no human-to-human transmission. What?s tomorrow going to bring, what?s the next day going to bring? You don?t know and I don?t know,? he added.
But Oxford, of the U.K's Queen Mary, University of London, stressed there was ?no need for anyone to start flapping at the moment.?
?I don?t think we should start thinking of 1918 scenarios, definitely not,? he said.
Bobby Yip/Reuters
Officials from the Center for Food Safety get a blood sample from a chicken imported from mainland China at a border checkpoint in Hong Kong on Thursday.
A group of Chinese scientists, writing in the New England Journal of Medicine, also warned that the ?pandemic potential of these novel avian-origin viruses should not be underestimated.?
?Severe avian influenza A (H7N9) infections, characterized by high fever and severe respiratory symptoms, may pose a serious human health risk,? it added. ?We are concerned by the sudden emergence of these infections and the potential threat to the human population.?
However ? mirroring the split on the streets of Shanghai ? other experts were less worried.
Adolfo Garcia-Sastre, a microbiology professor at Mount Sinai School of Medicine in New York and principal investigator for the Center for Research on Influenza Pathogenesis, said while it was ?too early to be able to conclude anything ?? the probabilities are very low? that a global pandemic is looming.
He was comforted by the lack of a surge in the numbers of people with the disease.
?It?s not that it?s increasing by ten times per week, I think right now the number of cases is what you would have expected from the original numbers,? he said.
?Right now there are no major indications to become highly alarmed.?
Ian Johnston reported from London.
Related:
Deaths from new bird flu underscore grim fears, reports show
US rushes to make vaccine against new bird flu -- just in case
New H7N9 bird flu has officials worried about skimpy resources
This story was originally published on Sun Apr 14, 2013 12:47 PM EDT
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Venezuela's interim President Nicolas Maduro attends a ceremony marking the Day of the National Revolutionary Militia, also called Bolivarian militias, in Caracas, Venezuela, Saturday, April 13, 2013. The Bolivarian Militia is a force of volunteers ranging from students to retirees formed by the late President Hugo Chavez. Just over a month after Chavez succumbed to cancer, Venezuelans vote Sunday to replace him. Maduro, who served as Chavez's foreign minister and vice president, is running against opposition candidate Henrique Capriles in Sunday's vote.(AP Photo/Ramon Espinosa)
Venezuela's interim President Nicolas Maduro attends a ceremony marking the Day of the National Revolutionary Militia, also called Bolivarian militias, in Caracas, Venezuela, Saturday, April 13, 2013. The Bolivarian Militia is a force of volunteers ranging from students to retirees formed by the late President Hugo Chavez. Just over a month after Chavez succumbed to cancer, Venezuelans vote Sunday to replace him. Maduro, who served as Chavez's foreign minister and vice president, is running against opposition candidate Henrique Capriles in Sunday's vote.(AP Photo/Ramon Espinosa)
Opposition presidential candidate Henrique Capriles waves as he arrives to a news conference in Caracas, Venezuela, Saturday, April 13, 2013. Capriles is running against ruling party candidate and acting President Nicolas Maduro in Sunday's special presidential election. (AP Photo/Fernando Llano)
A picture of Venezuela's late President Hugo Chavez covers a door at the 23 de Enero neighborhood campaign command center for the ruling United Socialist Party of Venezuela (PSUV) in Caracas, Venezuela, Friday, April 12, 2013. Nicolas Maduro, Chavez's hand-picked successor, is running for president against opposition candidate Henrique Capriles on April 14, in an election to replace Chavez who died on March 5. (AP Photo/Ramon Espinosa)
Dolls of Venezuela's late President Hugo Chavez, left, and independence hero Simon Bolivar sit inside the 23 de Enero neighborhood campaign command center for the ruling United Socialist Party of Venezuela (PSUV) in Caracas, Venezuela, Friday, April 12, 2013. Nicolas Maduro, Chavez's hand-picked successor, is running for president against opposition candidate Henrique Capriles on April 14, in an election to replace Chavez who died on March 5. (AP Photo/Ramon Espinosa
Defaced campaign signs of ruling party presidential candidate Nicolas Maduro cover a wall in Caracas, Venezuela, Friday, April 12, 2013. Maduro, who served as Chavez's foreign minister and vice president, is running against opposition candidate Henrique Capriles in Sunday's presidential election. (AP Photo/Ariana Cubillos)
CARACAS, Venezuela (AP) ? Voters who kept Hugo Chavez in office for 14 years were deciding Sunday whether to elect the devoted lieutenant he chose to carry on the revolution that endeared him to the poor but that many Venezuelans believe is ruining the nation.
Across Caracas, trucks blaring bugle calls awoke Venezuelans long before dawn in the ruling socialists' traditional election day get-out-the-vote tactic. This time, they also boomed Chavez's voice singing the national anthem.
Nicolas Maduro was riding on Chavez's endorsement with a campaign largely silent on the issues but freighted with personal attacks that was otherwise little more than an unflagging tribute to the polarizing leader who died of cancer March 5.
Chavez's longtime Chavez foreign minister pinned his hopes on the immense loyalty for his boss among millions of poor beneficiaries of a socialist government's largesse and the heft of a state apparatus that Chavez skillfully consolidated.
The governing United Socialist Party of Venezuela deployed a well-worn get-out-the-vote machine spearheaded by loyal state employees. It also enjoyed a pervasive state media apparatus as part of a near monopoly on institutional power.
Challenger Henrique Capriles' aides accused Chavista loyalists in the judiciary of putting them at glaring disadvantage by impoverishing the campaign and opposition broadcast media by targeting them with unwarranted fines and prosecutions.
Capriles' main campaign weapon was simply to point out "the incompetence of the state," as he put it to reporters Saturday night.
Maduro, 50, was still favored, but his early big lead in opinion polls halved over the past two weeks in a country struggling with the legacy of Chavez's management of the world's largest oil reserves. Millions of Venezuelans were lifted out of poverty under Chavez, but many also believe that his confederates not only squandered but also plundered much of the $1 trillion in oil revenues during his time in office.
People are fed up with chronic power outages, crumbling infrastructure, unfinished public works projects, double-digit inflation, food and medicine shortages and rampant crime that has given Venezuela among the world's highest homicide and kidnapping rates.
"We can't continue to believe in messiahs," said Jose Romero, a 48-year-old industrial engineer who voted for Capriles in the central city of Valencia. "This country has learned a lot and today we know that one person can't fix everything."
In Caracas, 59-year-old street vendor Jose Alzualde said he believed, however, that "Chavez's legacy should continue." He said Venezuela "needs a united country in order to advance. There are political divisions that should end."
Capriles is a 40-year-old state governor who lost to Chavez in October's presidential election by a nearly 11-point margin, the best showing ever by a challenger to the longtime president.
He showed Maduro none of the respect he had accorded Chavez. Maduro hit back hard, at one point calling Capriles' backers "heirs of Hitler." It was an odd accusation considering that Capriles is the grandson of Holocaust survivors from Poland.
"Capriles ran a remarkable campaign that shows he has creativity, tenacity and disposition to play political hardball," said David Smilde, an analyst with the Washington Office on Latin America think tank.
At his campaign rallies, Capriles would read out a list of unfinished road, bridge and rail projects. Then he asked people what goods were scarce on store shelves. The opposition contends Chavez looted the treasury last year to buy re-election with government largesse. It also complains about the steady flow of cut-rate oil to Cuba, which Capriles says will end if he is elected.
Venezuela's $30 billion fiscal deficit accounts for about 10 percent of gross domestic product.
Maduro, a former union activist and bus driver with close ties to Cuba's leaders, constantly alleged that Capriles was conspiring with U.S. putschists to destabilize Venezuela and even suggested Washington had infected Chavez with the cancer that killed him.
He focused his campaign message on his mentor: "I am Chavez. We are all Chavez" and promised to expand anti-poverty programs.
Michael Shifter of the Inter-American Dialogue think tank said Maduro campaigned "ineptly," trying too hard to "replay the Chavez script" and alienating moderate Chavistas.
Whoever wins Sunday will face no end of hard choices.
Many factories operate at half capacity because strict currency controls make it hard for them to pay for imported parts and materials. Business leaders say some companies are on verging on bankruptcy because they are unable to extend lines of credit with foreign suppliers.
Chavez imposed currency controls a decade ago trying to stem capital flight as his government expropriated large land parcels and dozens of businesses. Now, dollars sell on the black market at three times the official exchange rate and Maduro has had to devalue Venezuela's currency, the bolivar, twice this year.
Meanwhile, consumers grumble that stores are short of milk, butter, corn flour and other staples. The government blames hoarding, while the opposition points at the price controls imposed by Chavez in an attempt to bring down double-digit inflation.
A 40-year-old lawyer who sometimes works with the government said as he walked with his wife and two small children to the polls in central Caracas that he was fed up and voting for Capriles.
"But I can't say that openly because I could lose work," said the man, who would only give his first name, Marcelino.
"But we can't have fear," his wife, Lisette Ruiz, told him. "If Maduro wins everything is going to get worse."
Capriles said he will reverse land expropriations, which he says have ruined many farms and forced Venezuela to import food after previously being a net exporter of beef, rice, coffee and other foods. But even Capriles said currency and price controls cannot be immediately scrapped without triggering a disastrous run on the bolivar.
High international oil prices remain a boon for Venezuela, underpinning its economy. Chavez spent $500 billion to bolster social programs, trimming the poverty rate from 50 percent to about 30 percent.
But critics say the government has misused the oil industry, ordering the state oil company PDVSA into food distribution and financing of social programs while neglecting needed investment, causing production and refining to drop.
Venezuela's oil revenue is down from $5.6 billion five years ago to $3.8 billion in 2012, and PDVSA's debt climbed to $40 billion last year. The country even imports 100,000 barrels a day of gasoline from the United States.
___
Associated Press writers Fabiola Sanchez in Caracas and Vivian Sequera in Valencia, Venezuela contributed to this report.
___
Alexandra Olson on Twitter: http://twitter.com/Alexolson99
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Zingano found herself in trouble early in the fight as she was caught in several of Tate's submission attempts in what proved to be a thrilling bout. Both a kneebar and an armbar appeared to be tight, but Zingano worked out of every attempt Tate tried. In the third round, the fight turned for Zingano as she hit Tate with several, well-timed knees from the clinch. Zingano finally finished the bout with an elbow.
Now, Zingano, the first mother to ever fight in the UFC, will coach against Rousey on the next season of "The Ultimate Fighter." Their teams will face off on the reality show that will air on the soon-to-be launched Fox Sports 1, and then Zingano and Rousey will fight for the UFC women's bantamweight belt.
[Also: What's next for Urijah Faber after his submission victory?]
Zingano and Rousey are already looking forward to facing each other.
"It's going to come down to heart, to technique, to speed. It's going to be a battle. You're going to watch," Zingano said after the bout.
Rousey admitted the fight wasn't exactly what she expected, but she already learned something about her future opponent.
"Cat really showed that she was able to perform under pressure. I'm going to be ready for that," Rousey said.
Though Rousey has only been a professional MMA fighter for two years, she zoomed to the top of the women's MMA world since switching to fighting after winning an Olympic bronze medal in judo. She has seven straight fights by first-round, armbar wins, including her defeat of Liz Carmouche in her UFC debut in February.
[Related: Kelvin Gastelum wins 'The Ultimate Fighter']
Zingano is also undefeated as a professional. Like Rousey, she is 7-0, but has finished opponents through knockouts and submissions. With a wrestling and jiu-jitsu background, she is a more well-rounded fighter than many of Rousey's previous opponents. Zingano showed her power against Tate, so it will be interesting to see if she will be able to muster the same kind of power against Rousey.
Women fighting in the UFC is still new, as the Tate-Zingano bout was just the second female bout in UFC history. The women's bantamweight division is quickly growing, though; it has added several fighters since Rousey was originally signed as the first women in the UFC. Adding TUF castmembers to the mix will help it the division develop depth even faster.
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The results can range from enlightening - Kubrick did like to mess with things - to embarrassing. But it's never dull. "Room 237" shines.
You don't have to buy any of the nutty theories in Room 237 to appreciate what director Rodney Ascher has accomplished.
It's nuts, in the best possible way.
Their imaginings are not far removed from the deconstuctionist gobbledygook that has hammerlocked academic film and literary scholarship. But here at least the gobbledygook is entertaining.
[It] may be the surpassingly eccentric-and enormously entertaining-film that Kubrick deserves.
"Room 237" is an act of uncommon devotion to cinema, embracing the notion that movies are best defined by what happens to us as we watch them - how our own beliefs and experiences dictate our interpretation of what we've seen and heard.
It is nice to see a doc that makes you smile instead of making you angry. Anyone who is a fan of Stanley Kubrick will eat this up.
Powered by a deep and abiding affection for both The Shining and Kubrick in general, Room 237 is an amuse-bouche of remix culture.
Room 237 is an extended riff of the "Paul is dead" variety. But, you know what? Sometimes a guy moving a table in the background is just a guy moving a table in the background.
A diverting excursion for lovers of Kubrick's films...even if, at over a hundred minutes, it does go on a bit long.
A fascinating doc that will get both film geeks and conspiracy theorists alike drooling, it all but guarantees you'll never watch The Shining quite the same way again.
Confounding, eye-opening, and often hilarious.
I suspect that Ascher's intention was to dynamize an academic exercise, but these constant, sundry inserts render the tone as corny and glib as a VH1 special.
The thrill's in the thinking about little pieces of cinematic language as words contributing to a two-hour essay.
Would it be hypocritical to say that I loved "Room 237," even thought I felt like 75 percent of what was said in it was completely hooey?
a journey down a rabbit hole worth taking, as the film immerses us in alternately fascinating, compelling, absurd, and frightening theories about what, exactly, The Shining is (or might be) about
Room 237 is both an ode to the subversive nature of the movies and a fascinating insight into clashing obsessions in its most lurid form, even when its stylistic choices seek to destroy the experience.
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Source: http://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/room_237_2012/
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I (or somebody) should run a history of economic thought conference to celebrate the seventieth anniversary of Abba Lerner's "Functional Finance" in the fall?
Milton Friedman on Abba Lerner:
Milton Friedman and Rose Friedman, Two Lucky People: We were affected very differently by the Keynesian revolution?Lerner becoming an enthusiastic convert and one of the most effective expositors and interpreters of Keynes, I remaining largely unaffected and if anything somewhat hostile?.
Lerner was trained at the London School of Economics, where the dominant view was that the depression was an inevitable result of the prior boom, that it was deepened by the attempts to prevent prices and wages from falling and firms from going bankrupt, that the monetary authorities had brought on the depression by inflationary policies before the crash and had prolonged it by ?easy money? policies thereafter; that the only sound policy was to let the depression run its course, bring down money costs, and eliminate weak and unsound firms.
By contrast with this dismal picture, the news seeping out of Cambridge (England) about Keynes?s interpretation of the depression and of the right policy to cure it must have come like a flash of light on a dark night? It is easy to see how a young, vigorous, and generous mind would have been attracted to it?
The intellectual climate at Chicago had been wholly different. My teachers regarded the depression as largely the product of misguided policy?or at least as greatly intensified by such policies. They blamed the monetary and fiscal authorities for permitting banks to fail and the quantity of deposits to decline. Far from preaching the need to let deflation and bankruptcy run their course, they issued repeated pronunciamentos calling for governmental action to stem the deflation?as J. Rennie Davis put it, ?Frank H. Knight, Henry Simons, Jacob Viner, and their Chicago colleagues argued throughout the early 1930?s for the use of large and continuous deficit budgets to combat the mass unemployment and deflation of the times.?
There was nothing in these views to repel a student; or to make Keynes attractive. On the contrary, so far as policy was concerned, Keynes had nothing to offer those of us who had sat at the feet of Simons, Mints, Knight, and Viner.
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