Robert Pattinson And Kristen Stewart - Cheating Rumours! Rob Kissed A Girl Named Erika Dutra?

After the debut of the first short trailer of 'The Twilight Saga: Eclipse' (trailer HERE), the attention continues for the real-life couple Robert Pattinson and Kristen Stewart. The latest buzz: Robert Pattinson is allegedly cheating on Kristen Stewart. Life and Style posted a very interesting photo, showing off Rob, sitting next to a gorgeous blonde. According to Life and Style (Click the link to see the 'evidence'), Rob enjoyed the post-party for amfAR Cinema Against AIDS in Cannes with Erika Dutra. The source of the magazine spilled: "Erika was introduced to Robert by a mutual friend at the beginning of the night and he was smitten with her from that point on. He took pictures of her, sat with her all night, and the two of them were even seen kissing! There was serious chemistry between them, and they looked like they were having an amazing time." OMG - Rob and Erika kissed? How come? Looks like Kristen Stewart needs to check this one. Speaking of her, K-Stew is currently in Los Angeles - and is reportedly set to promote her new film 'The Runaways', a biopic flick where Kristen played the role of 80s rock icon Joan Jett. Update: A bit old story.Photo by: Fame Pictures

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The 60th Berlinale--Retrospektively Speaking

by Richard Traubner The Retrospektive at the Berlinale usually excites all types of film historians, curators, museum personnel, and other interested parties--especially when it's a German subject. This year, a restored version of Fritz Lang's 1927 Metropolis trumped the Retrospektive itself, which was a look-back at significant and sometimes controversial films shown at the film festival since it began in 1951--in far warmer June weather. Many of these films are quite familiar now: In the Realm of the Senses, The Deer Hunter, or even Powell and Pressburger's The Tales of Hoffmann. One can obtain these from any video store. There was a large crowd for the showing I caught of Clouzot's Le Salaire de la Peur, but it began by being accidentally screened in widescreen format. After that was corrected, the film's exposition seemed endless, and hardly classic, before the actual dynamite truck ride began. Metropolis has been restored several times, a few years ago with footage found at Moscow's Gosfilmofond archive. But two years ago a longer version was found in a Buenos Aires archive that contained about a half-hour of footage that had not been seen since the film's premiere at the UFA Palast am Zoo in 1927. With the help of the original Gottfried Huppertz orchestral parts, its music cues, and the archival censorship copy of the script, the grainy Argentinian scenes were fitted into what is now touted as the complete Metropolis. This was shown in direct transmission en plein air at the Brandenburg Gate, and on television, the second night of the festival, to a crowd of very cold film buffs. The saga of Metropolis's journey, after being severely cut and rewritten for a Paramount release in the USA by the writer Channing Pollock, was also the subject of a fascinating exhibit at the Berlin Kinemathek, which showed everything from original costume designs to a still of Lang and his stars playing in a jazz band on the set. The second German release was much shorter, as it was felt the original was too long for 1920s' audiences. Although Lang's film may have been mutilated in the process, it cannot be said to be the easiest film to sit through, even in its present, restored version. And it's worth remembering that the film was not the desired international success Ufa envisioned. But the wonders of Lang's film as a predecessor of most science-fiction and futuristic films remain luminously vivid, with the spectacular sets by Hunte and Kettelhut, the amazing lighting, camerawork of Freund, and Lang's strirring mise-en-scène. But the plot itself, with its future + present + Christian-humanist themes, does not wear as well as it might, despite wonderful performances from its cast: Gustav Frölich, Alfred Abel, Heinrich George, and the amazing Brigitte Helm. I was enchanted by the very 1927 nightclub scenes found throughout the film, with their fantastic revue sets and costumes, some of which were newly discovered in Argentina. Lang was of course courted by the Nazi regime early on, despite his Jewish roots. The spectre of Nazi-era subjects, and even their very films, were potently on display at this Berlinale. Jud Süss-Film ohne Gewissen (directed by Oskar Roehler), scrutinised the making of the infamous propaganda film originally directed by Veit Harlan in 1940. This was an uneasy mélange of National-Socialist nostalgie, with glamorous receptions peopled by film-star portrayers, songs of the period, jokes against Hitler, non-heiling by an artsy crowd, nightclub scenes, and reconstructions of the original black-and-white film scenes-which turned out to be more riveting than the other recreated vignettes. (One exception was the documented showing of Jud Süss to SS officers who would later work in the as-yet unfinished Auschwitz.) Although the unease of the lead actor Ferdinand Marian was depicted, the film seemed flat compared to the more captivatingly diabolical tale of an opportunistic actor, a thinly-veiled Gustav Gründgens, in Mephisto (1981). For Jud Süss, the very popular actor Moritz Bleibtreu was on hand to give a very flashy portrait of propaganda minister (and film tsar) Josef Goebbels. The French La Rafle, a fictional account (shown in the market section) of the Vélodrôme d'Hiver round-up of Paris Jews in 1942, was not open to the press before its Paris release on March 10th. But another commercial film with NS subject matter was: the Norwegian Svik (Betrayal), a compendium of Nazi clichés that almost seemed a parody. For actual Nazi horror, one could turn to the real footage of a Nazi project that was the subject of a new Israeli documentary, A Film Unfinished (Yael Hersonski). The Warsaw Ghetto scenes filmed by SS cameramen were frightful, with the very evident death, starvation and rags of the inmates on view just before the mass deportations to Treblinka began in the summer of 1942. Not content to show simple misery and degradation, the filmmakers actually staged scenes of comparatively healthy-looking Jews gorging themselves, drinking, smoking and laughing at tables filled with amounts of food they had not seen for months. The "acting" of the Jewish crowds was forced on them by the helmers, with obviously terrible consequences if they failed to react properly. This is the worst kind of a horror film, as frightening as any concentration camp footage because we know what lay in store for most of the cast. The Nazi documentary using this footage was never actually made, and only recently uncovered in an archive vault. Further post-Nazi-era documentaries included a film on the postwar prosecutor Fritz Bauer, mysteriously murdered, and a documentary with newly restored footage of some of the Nürnberg war-crimes trials. Ironically, the golden-age Ufa producer Erich Pommer worked on this exposé, shown in postwar Germany but never in the USA. Another retrospective but modern glimpse of totalitarian days was the superb Czech film Kawasaki's Rose, directed by Jan Hrebejk, dealing in a different, but no less fascinating way to elements of secret-police activity and betrayal as shown in the Das Leben der Anderen. In another depiction of a mass-murderer by a very popular actor, André Dussollier appeared rather unusually as a comparatively gentle, nuanced Stalin in his final days in the French Une exécution ordinaire (writer-director Marc Dugain), opposite a quite frightened female doctor played memorably by Marina Hands. I missed screenings of three prewar Japanese films by Shimazu Yasujiro in the Forum section, unfortunately, but managed to take in such interesting period projects as the French L'Autre Dumas, a study of the unsettling relationship between Alexandre père and his uncredited co-author, Auguste Macquet. With brilliant playing by an overstuffed, over-the-top Gerard Depardieu and the requisitely nerdy Benoit Poelvoorde, and a witty script, based on a play, the film held one's dramatic as well as decorative interest. Finally, a moving documentary in the Panorama section about a 1950s' Hollywood icon: Rock Hudson-Dark and Handsome Stranger (Andrew Davies, André Schäfer), which plumbed the saga of a real man's man of an actor who of course turned out to be gay, and, in a celebrity death, helped change attitudes toward the AIDS crisis. by Richard Traubner http://www.filmfestivals.com/htm/festivals.shtml

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Old City Hall vs. Pierce County AIDS Foundation battle continues with dueling lawsuits

| A long-running dispute pitting the Pierce County AIDS Foundation against a downtown Tacoma redeveloper has boiled over into dueling lawsuits.

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South Africa: Gauteng Steps Up Fight Against HIV/Aids

The Gauteng provincial government has set a target to reduce new HIV infections by 50 percent by 2011.

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Preity Zinta to spread AIDS awareness via IPL

New Delhi, March 11 – Bollywood actor Preity Zinta, who was Thursday appointed as the goodwill ambassador for UNAIDS in India, will create awareness against AIDS.

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Cellphones the latest tool in Africa's fight against HIV

Mail & Guardian, SUSAN NJANJI A major mobile telephone operator in Nigeria already runs a toll-free call scheme that links callers to counsellors on HIV/Aids concerns.

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Dollar slips as support pledged for Greece

Greenbacks fall against the Euro as the E.U. aids Greece through a debt crisis

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Preity Zinta to spread AIDS awareness via IPL

Bollywood actor Preity Zinta, who was Thursday appointed as the goodwill ambassador for UNAIDS in India, will create awareness against AIDS along with the members of her Indian Premier League (IPL) team Kings XI Punjab. “All our players will sport red ribbons during their matches. In our first match against Delhi Daredevils, we will take an [...]

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Women of Haiti: A Violent History and Uncertain Future

http://www.now.org/issues/global/030910haiti-b.html By Liza Doubossarskaia, NOW Communications Volunteer March 9, 2010 Haiti's history is distinguished by terrific triumphs and equally terrific tragedies. The country's slave revolt and subsequent expulsion of colonial powers established Haiti as a nation with undeniable democratic roots. Yet, Haiti also has undergone periods of despotic rule that considerably undermined its founding principles. Women, especially, suffer as a result of Haiti's political instability and severe poverty. Despite what might seem like insurmountable circumstances, Myriam Merlet, Magalie Marcelin, Anne Marie Coriolan, and Myrna Narcisse courageously fought for the recognition of women's rights in Haiti. Tragically, all four died in the Feb. 14 earthquake. To fully appreciate the work of these feminist leaders, one must examine how women have been relegated to the status of second-class citizens with little claim to justice or legal protection. After President Jean-Bertrand Aristide was ousted in the military coup in 1991, the new regime employed systematic rape of women and girls as a tool of political oppression used against supporters of the democratic government and their families. Aristide was restored to power and then ousted for the second time in 2004 during an armed rebellion. In the period of civil unrest that followed, rape was once again used as a weapon. According to research published by The Lancet medical review, an estimated 19,000 per 100,000 girls were raped in Port-au-Prince area between February 2004 and December 2005. At present, rape remains a common practice among criminal gangs, and rape survivors are continually failed by their communities and law enforcement authorities. A blame-the-victim attitude continues to oppress all women in Haitian society. Until 2005 rape was considered a crime of passion, with monetary compensation or marriage to the rapist offered as restitution. According to an Amnesty International report, "victims of rape in Haiti are often unwilling to report the crime, largely due to shame, fear and social attitudes that tolerate and legitimize male violence." In addition to societal barriers to reporting rape, survivors are often threatened by their perpetrators, while police services remain disastrously inadequate. Merlet, who served as the Chief of Staff of the Haitian Ministry of Women's Affairs, fought to bring international attention to rape as a political weapon and worked tirelessly to expose Haiti's rape culture. Together with Coriolan and Marcelin, she lobbied the United Nations to pressure Haiti to categorize rape as a criminal offense and pass sexual assault laws. Rape and violence are also a grave reality of women's lives in the domestic sphere. A survey produced on behalf of the Ministry of Health found that out of 10,757 surveyed women ages 15 to 49, 10.8 percent reported experiencing sexual violence from an intimate partner. Violence within a family is still viewed as a private issue. However, Marcelin determinedly sought to transform this attitude. She founded the Kay Fanm organization, which tackles the problem of domestic violence and provides women with shelter and services. Marcelin also packed courtrooms with women in order to hold judges accountable, a daring move in Haitian society that led to the conviction of a man who battered his wife. Marcelin's Kay Fanm organization also gave out microloans to domestic violence survivors. Women, who head 46 percent of Haitian households, are disproportionately affected by poverty. In urban areas, for example, two in every three women-headed households live in extremely destitute economic conditions. As a result, at least 225,000 children have been forced into unpaid domestic servitude because their parents cannot afford to take care of them. Girls, who make up around two thirds of child laborers, are subject to sexual, psychological and physical abuse. This horrendous situation is further exacerbated by the government's trampling upon women's fundamental reproductive rights. Abortion is illegal in Haiti, and anyone convicted of performing the procedure can receive up to nine years in prison. A woman who obtains the procedure or carries out her own abortion is also subject to penalty of imprisonment. Back-alley and self-induced abortions carry a high risk of infection and death, and many women are reluctant to go to the hospital because of the social stigma attached to the procedure. According to a 1999 Ministry of Public Health report, eight percent of maternal mortality cases resulted from complications of underground abortions. When a woman does decide to carry her pregnancy to term, she is faced with tremendous difficulties. Amnesty International reports that "only one in every four births (26 percent) is assisted by qualified medical personnel," and that "pregnancy-related complications are responsible for nearly a quarter (24 percent) of all deaths of girls aged between 15 and 19." Haiti also has the highest mortality rate of children under five in the Western Hemisphere, with 12 percent of children dying before their first birthday and another one third dying before they turn five. Haiti has been hit hard by HIV/AIDS, with 200,000 children orphaned as a result. And only half of primary school-age children are able to attend primary schools. Merlet, Marcelin, Coriolan, and Narcisse fought to break the self-perpetuating cycle of poverty and violence that traps so many Haitian women. While significantly more progress still must be made, these leaders laid a firm groundwork upon which to build a safer and more just society. Their deaths were a tragic loss, but their contributions will become a part of Haiti's remarkable history and an inspiration for generations to come. Read more from NOW: Haitian Women's Desperate Lives--Education and Reproductive Health Care Must be Addressed in Re-Building Efforts

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FRC's Tony Perkins's attack on D.C. gay marriages is in line with his other false claims

crossposted on Holy Bullies and Headless Monsters To say that Family Research Council head Tony Perkins isn't happy about the fact that gays and lesbians can marry in Washington, D.C. should be considered a huge understatement. He makes this incredibly ridiculous statement about the marriages: The last census counted 3,678 same-sex partner homes in D.C. Assuming that number has stayed roughly the same, then the 150 who applied for marriage licenses yesterday would amount to a whopping four percent of the local homosexual population--hardly the stuff of economic recovery. For the Post's $52.2 million projection to come true, all 3,678 of those D.C. couples would have to get married and spend over $14,000 per wedding. (I don't know about you, but my wife and I spent a LOT less!) These "marriages" (which have yet to meet financial expectations in other states) may make a fast buck in the short term, but they will do nothing but drain the economy down the road. Consider the massive health care expenses incurred by taxpayers every year to cope with the diseases spread by homosexual behavior. According to the Kaiser Foundation, federal funding grew to more than $18 billion in 2004 to deal with the HIV/AIDS epidemic. Over half of all U.S. infections are in men having sex with men! That means taxpayers spend roughly $10 billion a year treating the diseases caused by a behavior celebrated in same-sex "marriage." So much for economic development! And where is the proof of this because Perkins doesn't provide any. I guess he figures that since he "sits on the right hand of God," any comment he makes about the gay community, no matter how rude or untrue, will suddenly become true. But in actuality, Perkins's comments doesn't surprise me because of his history of wild inaccuracies about the gay and lesbian community. For example: In February, he implied that repealing Don't Ask, Don't Tell would cause soldiers to be sexually harassed by their fellow gay service members. While Perkins didn't come out and say it, his claim echoed the discredited research of Paul Cameron who claimed (to the derision of sensible people) that a "new study" of his proves that gay service members are four to seven times more likely to rape their fellow service members. In October of last year, Perkins spoke out against the Obama Administration's plan to create a national resource center for lgbt seniors. Perkins said at the time: HHS has no idea how many LGBT seniors exist. No one does! The movement is only a few decades old, and people who are 80- or 90-years-old didn't grow up in a culture where it was acceptable to identify with this lifestyle. Of course, the real tragedy here--apart from the unnecessary spending--is that, given the risks of homosexual conduct, few of these people are likely to live long enough to become senior citizens! Yet once again, the Obama administration is rushing to reward a lifestyle that poses one of the greatest public health risks in America. Perkins's statement was contradicted by data supplied by the Obama Administration as well as the magazine Newsweek. Of course I should also mention that in his claim, Perkins again echoed the discredited research of Paul Cameron who once (using fallacious research) claimed that gay men have short life spans. In September of last year, Perkins submitted testimony to Congress in opposition of the Employment Non-Discrimination Act. In his testimony, when he wasn't supplying anecdotal evidence, Perkins misrepresented medical research to claim that the lgbt orientation itself is indicative of dangerous health behaviors. He used pro-gay publications to "prove" this point. However, Perkins omitted the fact that the research he was citing at no time blamed the lgbt orientation for the negative health behaviors in which some gays and lesbians were partaking of. The research placed the blame solely on the effects of gays and lesbians having to deal with a homophobic society. So basically it all comes down to this - Perkins is yet another religious right phony "expert" whose statements about the lgbt community should be viewed as a flight of fancy created by a preconceived belief that homosexuality in itself is evil, despite evidence to the contrary.

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