FACTBOX: Key facts on director Roman Polanski | Entertainment | Reuters(Reuters) - Roman Polanski, Oscar-winning director of the "Pianist," was arrested at the request of U.S. officials when trying to enter Switzerland to receive a prize from the Zurich Film Festival.
Polanski's arrest Saturday night was on a 1978 warrant issued by Los Angeles for unlawful sex with a 13-year-old girl. That girl is now a grown woman, Samantha Geimer, who lives in Hawaii. She has said Polanski should not serve any more time in prison.
Here are some key facts about Polanski and the case:
* Born Raymond Polanski to Polish-Jewish parents on August 18, 1933, he spent the first three years of his life in Paris before the family returned to Poland.
* In World War Two when the Germans sealed off the Jewish ghetto in Krakow in 1940, his father shouted to Roman to run and he escaped. His mother later died in an Auschwitz gas chamber.
* His first full-length feature film after graduation, "Knife in the Water," won a number of awards and, most important for Polanski, was his ticket to Hollywood movies.
* In August 1969, Polanski's wife, actress Sharon Tate, and six others, were hacked to death by followers of cult leader Charles Manson at his Hollywood home in a random attack.
* Polanski is wanted in the United States because in 1977 he pleaded guilty to having sex with a 13-year-old girl at a party that took place in the home of actor Jack Nicholson. Under his plea agreement, Polanski would have been sentenced to the 42 days he had already served in jail under psychiatric evaluation.
* But Polanski believed the judge, who has since died, might alter the plea agreement and require Polanski to spend years in jail, so he skipped bail in 1978 and fled to France before sentence was pronounced.
* A 2008 documentary film, "Roman Polanski: Wanted and Desired" looked at the case in detail. It included interviews with Geimer and lawyers involved in the case. Also in 2008, Polanski's lawyers sought to have the case dismissed based on an idea advanced in the film that there had been prosecutorial and judicial misconduct 30 years earlier.
* In an interview to promote the film, Geimer told Reuters, "I don't think he's a danger to society" and "I don't think he needs to be locked up forever, and no one has ever come out, ever, besides me and accused him of anything."
* Earlier this year, Polanski's attorneys lost their bid for a dismissal when Los Angeles Superior Court Judge Peter Espinoza ruled their legal motion "discloses no legal grounds for disqualification" of the original case.
* Polanski won a best director Oscar for his 2002 film "The Pianist," as well as the Cannes film festival's Palme d'Or (Golden Palm). He has also directed such film classics as "Chinatown," "Repulsion" and "Rosemary's Baby."
(Additional reporting by Bob Tourtellotte in Los Angeles; Editing by Doina Chiacu)
September 27, 2009
FACTBOX: Key facts on director Roman Polanski | Entertainment | Reuters
Director Roman Polanski Arrested By Swiss : NPR -SERIOUSLY, THIS IS FUCKING RETARDED
September 27, 2009Director Roman Polanski Arrested By Swiss : NPRThe Swiss Justice Ministry says director Roman Polanski is being held by Swiss authorities ahead of his possible extradition to the United States for having sex in 1977 with a 13-year-old girl.
The ministry says in a statement that Polanski was arrested Saturday upon arriving in Zurich. It says U.S. authorities have sought Polanski's arrest around the world since 2005.
The 76-year-old was flying in to receive an award at the Zurich Film Festival.
Polanski fled the U.S. in 1978, a year after pleading guilty to unlawful sexual intercourse with the girl.
The statement Sunday said Polanski will not be sent to the U.S. until extradition proceedings are completed. Polanski can contest his detention and any extradition decision in the Swiss courts.
THIS IS A BREAKING NEWS UPDATE. Check back soon for further information. AP's earlier story is below.
ZURICH (AP) — Director Roman Polanski was taken into custody, Swiss police confirmed Sunday, on a 1978 U.S. arrest warrant for having sex with a 13-year-old girl.
Polanski was flying in to receive an honorary award at the Zurich Film Festival when he was detained late Saturday at the airport, festival organizers said in a statement.
Zurich police spokesman Stefan Oberlin confirmed Polanski's arrest, but refused to provide more details because he said it was a matter for the Swiss Justice Ministry.
Ministry spokesman Guido Balmer declined to comment. Rudolf Wyss, the Justice Ministry deputy director, also declined to comment on the case. But he told The Associated Press that Switzerland and the United States have an extradition treaty dating back to the 1950s that is still in force.
Polanski fled the U.S. in 1978, a year after pleading guilty to unlawful sexual intercourse with a 13-year-old girl.
The 76-year-old director of such classic films as "Chinatown" and "Rosemary's Baby" has asked a U.S. appeals court in California to overturn a judges' refusal to throw out his case. He claims misconduct by the now-deceased judge who had arranged a plea bargain and then reneged on it.
Polanski has lived for the past three decades in France, where his career has continued to flourish. He received a directing Oscar in absentia for the 2002 movie "The Pianist."
Festival organizers said Polanski's detention had caused "shock and dismay," but that they would go ahead with Sunday's planned retrospective of the director's work.
The Swiss Directors Association sharply criticized authorities for what it deemed "not only a grotesque farce of justice, but also an immense cultural scandal."
A native of France who was taken to Poland by his parents, Polanski escaped Krakow's Jewish ghetto as a child and lived off the charity of strangers. His mother died at the Auschwitz Nazi death camp.
He worked his way into filmmaking in Poland, gaining an Oscar nomination for best foreign-language film in 1964 for his "Knife in the Water." Offered entry to Hollywood, he directed the classic "Rosemary's Baby" in 1968.
But his life was shattered again in 1969 when his wife, actress Sharon Tate, and four other people were gruesomely murdered by followers of Charles Manson. She was eight months pregnant.
He went on to make another American classic, "Chinatown," released in 1974.
In 1977, he was accused of raping a teenager while photographing her during a modeling session. The girl said Polanski plied her with champagne and part of a Quaalude pill at Jack Nicholson's house while the actor was away. She said that, despite her protests, he performed oral sex, intercourse and sodomy on her.
Polanski was allowed to plead guilty to one of six charges, unlawful sexual intercourse, and was sent to prison for 42 days of evaluation.
Lawyers agreed that would be his full sentence, but the judge tried to renege on the plea bargain. Aware the judge would sentence him to more prison time and require his voluntary deportation, Polanski fled to France.
The victim, Samantha Geimer, who long ago identified herself publicly, has joined in Polanski's bid for dismissal, saying she wants the case to be over. She sued Polanski and reached an undisclosed settlement.
William, Safire, Nixon'S Speech-writer, DieD @ SEVENTYNINE "N'OOO--OOOO-OOOOOO!'" FREE PUNCTUATION DAY
William Safire, Nixon Speechwriter, Dies At 79 : NPRAlex Wong/Getty ImagesWilliam Safire on Meet The Press in 2007.
William Safire, the conservative columnist and word warrior who eagerly took on political figures and the English language, died Sunday at age 79.
The Pulitzer Prize winner died in Maryland, assistant Rosemary Shields said. He had been diagnosed with cancer, but she declined to say when that had happened or what type of cancer he had.
Safire spent more than 30 years writing on the op-ed page of The New York Times. In his "On Language" column in The New York Times Magazine and more than a dozen books, Safire traced the origins of words and everyday phrases such as "straw-man," "under the bus" and "the proof is in the pudding."
Safire penned more than 3,000 columns, aggressively defending civil liberties and Israel while tangling with political figures. Bill Clinton famously wanted to punch the curmudgeonly columnist in the nose after Safire called his wife, Hillary Clinton, "a congenital liar."
Shields said: "Not only was he brilliant in language and assessing the nuances of politics, he was a kind and funny boss who gave lots of credit to others."
As a speechwriter in the Nixon White House, Safire penned Vice President Spiro Agnew's famous phrase, "nattering nabobs of negativism," a tongue-in-cheek alliteration that Safire claimed was directed not at the press but at Vietnam defeatists.
Safire also wrote several novels and served as chairman of the Dana Foundation, a philanthropy that supports brain science, immunology and arts education.
Along with George Will and William F. Buckley Jr., Safire's smooth prose helped make conservatism respectable in the 1970s, paving the way for the Reagan Revolution.
Safire was a pioneer of opinionated reporting. His columns were often filled with sources from Washington and the Middle East, making them must-reads for Beltway insiders.
Author Eric Alterman, in his 1999 book Sound and Fury: The Making of the Punditocracy, called Safire an institution unto himself.
"Few insiders doubt that William Safire is the most influential and respected pundit alive," Alterman wrote.
Safire's scathing columns on Carter White House budget director Bert Lance's financial affairs won him the Pulitzer Prize for commentary in 1978; in 1995 Safire was named to the Pulitzer board.
Critics said Safire made loose accusations trumpeting various "scandals" by the Clintons that were never borne out by the facts.
"Like a pioneering blogger, Safire years ago started grabbing bits of information and wrapping them in the tightest partisan, what-if spin possible," Eric Boehlert wrote in the Web site Salon in 2004. "When the accusation unraveled, he'd simply ignore the thud of his charges hitting the floor."
From 2001 to 2003, Safire also published several columns pressing the case that Saddam Hussein was linked to the Sept. 11 attacks, calling it an "undisputed fact" that hijacker Mohamed Atta met with a senior Iraqi intelligence official in Prague in April 2001. The 9/11 commission said that meeting never happened.
Safire's pun-filled "On Language" column exploring the foibles and abuses of the English language was far less controversial, winning him more admirers across the political spectrum.
Safire lived in the Washington suburb of Chevy Chase, Md., with his wife, Helene, a British-born jewelry designer; they had a son and a daughter.
Safire, born Dec. 17, 1929, to a Jewish family in New York City, was the youngest of three boys. He attended Syracuse University but dropped out after two years to work as a legman for a Republican political strategist and publicist Tex McCrary, who had a column in the New York Herald Tribune.
Safire started writing speeches for Nixon in 1965 and followed him to the White House. He left shortly before the Watergate break-in erupted into a full-fledged scandal.
LE CLANDESTIN. THE CLANDESTINE killer cat movie...video in five minutes
Question existentielle n'est-il pas ? Existential question is not it?
Avant de vous faire part de mes réflexions métaphysiques, laissez-moi vous conter la génèse du visionnage de cette oeuvre qui allait changer ma vie. Before I share my thoughts metaphysical, let me tell you the genesis of viewing this work that would change my life. Si si. If so. J'insiste. I insist. Au commencement ma génitrice - j'ai nommé la mère Dumeur - dans un rayon DVD de supermarché. In the beginning my progenitor - I named the mother Dumeur - within DVD supermarket. Ma donneuse de vie a aussi un autre don, plus méconnu des humains lambda : repérer les nanars. My giver of life has another gift, most misunderstood human lambda: identify nanars. Ma mère a un saunar à nanars : vous la mettez au milieu d'une pile de DVD de toutes sortes et de toutes les couleurs, et pan ! My mother has a saunar to nanars you put it among a stack of DVDs of all kinds and all colors, and bang! direct elle va faire le bonheur de vos dimanches après-midis de torpeur post barbecue. Live it will bring happiness to your Sunday afternoon of torpor post barbecue. Elle dit qu'elle est aveugle, moi je dis mon cul, à moins que le sixième sens à nanars ça existe. She says she is blind, I say my ass, at least the sixth sense nanars it exists.
Et ma mère elle l'a elle l'a tututudu tutudu. And my mother she has she has tututudu tutudu.
Donc LE CLANDESTIN de quoi ça cause mes jeunes amis ? THE CLANDESTINE So what's the cause of my young friends? Prenez quelques acteurs criant famine, quelques bombasses et quelques autres pas encore célèbres, mélangez le tout à la manière n'importenawak brushing des années 80, liez la sauce avec des éléments fantastico-pourraves et vous obtiendrez ça : Take a few players crying famine, a few bombs and some other not yet known, mix all the way n'importenawak brushing 80s, bind the sauce with elements fantastico-pourraves and get this:
Mais, mais, mais et là peut être que le titre prend tout son sens, dans le chat il ya ça : But, but, but and there may be that the title makes sense in the cat there is this:
Là c'est Rob ESTES qui paraît-il a été recruté dans MELROSE PLACE suite à ce regard globuleux tortillé du sourcil, Here is Rob Estes who it seems has been recruited in MELROSE PLACE continued to look twisted bulging brow, 
Vous ne comprenez pas de quoi je parle ? You do not understand what I mean? Moi non plus ça tombe bien, c'est que j'ai du piquer du nez pendant mon visionnage journalistique et je suis nulle en transition. Moi non plus they're not alone, that I had to bite my nose while watching journalism and I am no transition.
Pour résumer, LE CLANDESTIN c'est l'histoire de gros branques qui embarquent sur un bateau de luxe on sait pas trop pourquoi, avec un chat qui a subi de terribles bidouilles génétiques, à tel point qu'il ne se contente pas du Sheba pour dire je t'aime. To summarize, THE CLANDESTINE is the story of big branques who board a luxury boat is unclear why a cat that has suffered terrible genetic tinkering, so much so that it does not merely of Sheba to say I love you. Et les bidouilles génétiques c'est pas bien, ça change même la race et la couleur du poil à la fin : And genetic tinkering is not good, it changes the same race and color of hair at the end:
Alors si comme les Dumeurs ce week-end vous voulez passer un moment inoubliable, ruez-vous sur le DVD, disponible dans toutes les bonnes animaleries. So if like Dumeurs this weekend you want to spend an unforgettable moment, Ruez you on DVD, available from all good pet.
Ou alors jetez votre mère dans un rayon DVD. Or throw your mother in a ray DVD. Parce que les chats c'est que des gros branleurs qui fument des pétards et jouent au babyfoot toute la journée. Because the cat is as big wankers who smoke of firecrackers and playing table football all day.
Alvino Rey - Talking Steel Guitar Says 'Goodbye'
MISSING! ONE TALKING STEEL GUITAR VIDEO - REWARD - PETE DRAKE'S 'FOREVER' - Please contact - visualguidanceltd.blogspot - if you can help locate my old Alvino Rey Orchestra "St. Louis Blues" clip from the movie "Jam Session" with the Talking Steel Guitar Puppet (stringy) and vocals by Skeets Herfert. Pappy Stuckey has a wonderful SLB uploaded with the King Sisters singing, but that's not the one.
Ties.com - How To Tie A Tie
Ties.com - How To Tie A TieHow To Tie A Tie
Shop and Save Men's Neckwear
Shop and Save Men's Accessories
How To Tie a Tie
Knots and TipsFour-In-Hand Knot
One of the easiest ways to tie a necktie is using the Four-In-Hand knot. If tied correctly this knot will still have a professional appearance. In fact, most zipper ties and clip on ties use a knot that is similar to the Four-In-Hand knot. This knot is less complex and only wraps around a couple of times, tall people will find it to be desirable if they can not achieve their desired necktie length with other methods.
Half Windsor Knot
The Half Windsor is a simple, professional looking knot for your necktie. The Half Windsor is a large knot that has a nice uniform shape to it. This knot is usually used with uniform ties that are made of thick materials like polyester and wool, but will work good with most necktie materials. If the knot appears to be too large, you may want to use a Four-In-Hand knot with your necktie. The Half Windsor knot will make your necktie shorter, if you are tall you may also want to try the Four-In-Hand knot.
Windsor Knot
The Windsor knot is the most professional looking knot for your necktie. The Windsor knot is a large knot that has a nice uniform shape to it. This knot is usually used with silk neckties or ties that are made of thin materials. If the knot appears to be too large you may want to use a Half Windsor or Four-In-Hand knot with your necktie. The Windsor knot will make your necktie shorter, if you are tall you may also want to try the Half Windsor or Four-in-Hand knot.
Proper Necktie Length
A necktie is tied to the proper length when the tip of the tie lies directly in line with the bottom of your belt buckle. If you are having problems getting the desired length for you necktie, you might need to use a different style of knot. Check out the knot styles to see which ones will make the tie shorter or longer. The Windsor will be the thickest knot, making your tie length shorter, followed by the Half Windsor and the Four-In-Hand, which will be a smallest knot.
The Dimple In Your Tie
The dimple adds that finished look to the necktie. When you are done tying your tie, but before you have completely tightened the knot, hold you finger on the center of the necktie slightly inside the knot. Then you simply push on the middle of the tie and squeeze the edges as you tighten the knot. The dimple will work best with the Windsor and Half Windsor knots. If you are using a Four-In-Hand knot it will be tough to get a nice looking dimple.
Fidel Castro fathered at least 10 children by a string of women, says book
Fidel Castro fathered at least 10 children by a string of women, says bookLondon, September 27 (ANI): Cuban leader Fidel Castro has at least 10 children from his relationships with a string of women, if a new book is to be believed.
Even though discussing his womanising ways is strictly taboo on the Caribbean communist outpost, journalist Ann Louise Bardach has thrown light on Castro’s philandering in her book ‘Without Fidel’.
To be published by Scribner, the book chronicles the lives of Castro and his brother Raul, reports the Telegraph.
When Ann Louise, a long-time Cuba-watcher, once asked Castro how many children he had during an interview with Vanity Fair in 1993, the smiling leader answered: “Almost a tribe.”
While researching for the Without Fidel, she found how true that observation was.
Castro had one child, Fidelito (Little Fidel), with his first wife Myrta Diaz-Balart in 1949 and five boys between 1962 and 1974 with Dalia Soto del Valle, a little-seen companion whom he is said to have secretly married in 1980.
However, according to Ann Louise, there have been many more paramours and several other children along the way-most notably from the time when the 29-year-year old rebel leader celebrated his release from prison in 1955 for a failed uprising.
Three Castro offspring were born to three women during 1956, and Natalia Revuelta, an aristocratic beauty who became a fierce defender of his revolution, bore him a daughter, Alina Fernandez.
Ann Louise had previously reported the existence of another illegitimate 1956 child, Panchita Pupo. She was not even known to his other offspring and her mother remains unidentified.
In her book, the investigative journalist has now revealed the identity of the mother of Jorge Angel, the third Castro child of 1956 – Maria Laborde, an admirer who Castro met just after was he freed.
She also talks about a son known as Ciro, the early 1960s product of another brief fling.
He was previously unknown outside the family inner circle, but a close relative of Celia Sanchez, Castro’s closest confidante and yet another rumoured lover, revealed his existence to the author.
Earlier this year, a Cuban intelligence defector claimed that Castro had sired another son in 1970, which, if true, would take the count to 11 children by seven women. (ANI)
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