New app finds upcoming yoga classes wherever you are

Yoga enthusiasts perform an open air class in front of victory column 'Siegessaeule' in Berlin July 1, 2008.

Credit: Reuters/Hannibal Hanschke

By Natasha Baker

TORONTO | Mon Apr 15, 2013 5:14pm EDT

TORONTO (Reuters) - From hatha to vinyasa and everything in between, a new app helps yoga lovers find upcoming classes nearby.

Om finders, an iPhone app, detects a user's location and shows yoga classes happening at studios around them, including time and directions.

"The vision was to get more people on planet earth doing yoga," said Nancy Richardson, vice president of digital and brand strategy at Vancouver-based yoga apparel company Lululemon.

Classes can be found at nearly 7,000 studios in 63 countries worldwide and can be filtered by time and type, including hatha, power flow, vinyasa and hot yoga.

"It offers lots of different options to try different classes, types of yoga, and experience different teachers," Richardson said.

Yogis can also keep up with the schedules of their favorite instructors. The app has over 30,000 instructor profiles, which include a schedule of their upcoming classes.

According to Rachel Acheson, vice president of brand and community at Lululemon, the turnover for yoga is high. Although there are approximately 20 million people practicing yoga, about 20 percent drop out every year.

"The new people to yoga every year is substantial," said Acheson. "Finding your teacher is one of the biggest things that drives commitment to the practice."

Users can invite friends to join in on class by sending a text, tweet, email or Facebook message through the app, and keep track of the classes they're headed to.

The app launched Thursday and by Saturday had been downloaded over 18,000 times. It secured the top spot in the Health and Fitness category on Apple's App Store in Canada, and the third spot in the category in the U.S.

It is the first digital experience that the company has developed in-house, and is part of Lululemon's push towards creating hyper-local experiences for consumers.

"That connection with our guests and studio partners is happening on a local level," Richardson said. "Our digital strategy is people-first. Our goal is to build authentic relationships with communities."

Although users can add a class to their schedule, which syncs with the calendar app, it is not yet possible to book or pay for a class within the app.

"We're waiting to see what guests want, and we're not confident they're going to want to book," Richardson responded, adding that the company is actively monitoring feedback.

The company will continue to monitor demand for other platforms, but the company's customers are predominantly iPhone users, according to Richardson.

A similar app called Mindbody Yoga is available for iPhone, created by Mindbody, the company that supplies the data about classes, studios and instructors used in Om Finder.

It allows users to book and pay for classes if the studio supports that capability. It does not, however, provide the social features found in Om Finder, or information about in-store classes.

Another app called GoRecess, available on the web, allows users in the United States to find and book fitness classes in their cities, including yoga, strength-training, dance martial arts and boot camp classes.

(Editing by Paul Casciato)

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Alabama marks site of Martin Luther King Jr.'s 1963 jail letter

By Verna Gates

BIRMINGHAM, Alabama | Tue Apr 16, 2013 7:06pm EDT

BIRMINGHAM, Alabama (Reuters) - Martin Luther King Jr.'s daughter helped unveil a historical marker on Tuesday in the Alabama city where he penned his famous "Letter from Birmingham Jail," as people worldwide held readings to mark the 50th anniversary of the civil rights leader's words.

More than 100 people gathered outside a former jail in Birmingham, Alabama, to commemorate the letter, which King wrote from a jail cell on April 16, 1963, in response to eight white clergymen who criticized his demonstrations against segregation as "unwise and untimely."

King had been arrested for violating a law against mass public demonstrations in a southern U.S. city rife with racial unrest. His letter, an important document from the civil rights movement, contains the oft-quoted line "injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere."

"The City of Birmingham tried to run him out of town and now is honoring him as one of their heroes. How times have changed," said King's youngest daughter, Bernice King, who serves as chief executive officer of the King Center in Atlanta.

Bernice King joined Alabama's governor and other elected officials at a ceremony for the new marker outside the former jail, now an administrative office for the Birmingham Police Department.

The original jail cell is on display at the Birmingham Civil Rights Institute.

Her father wrote the lengthy letter in the margins of a newspaper, on scraps of paper from a black jail trustee and, finally, on paper brought in by King's lawyers.

He chastised the slow path to justice preferred by white moderates, whom he called "the Negro's great stumbling block."

Governor Robert Bentley said he reread the letter on the eve of the anniversary.

"Over the course of 7,000 powerful words, King shared the painful struggles of those who suffered discrimination," Bentley said. "We are better and stronger today because of his actions."

People from 28 U.S. states and 10 countries notified the Birmingham Public Library that they planned to remember King's letter by reading it aloud on Tuesday, said Jim Baggett, the library's archivist.

"It has a tremendous meaning all around the world and inspired activities such as Tiananmen Square," Baggett said. "It speaks to people who are oppressed and seeking justice."

(Editing by Colleen Jenkins and Todd Eastham)

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Life and death in Damascus's shrinking Square of Security

Pedestrians stop to read details of a death notice at a street in Damascus, April 3, 2013.

Credit: Reuters/Stringer

DAMASCUS | Wed Apr 17, 2013 10:25am EDT

DAMASCUS (Reuters) - In Damascus, even death offers no respite from the suffocating conflict encroaching on the Syrian capital.

The once secure central neighborhoods of the city are being sucked into the turmoil ravaging Syria as rebel fighters battle President Bashar al-Assad's forces on its periphery and step up rocket fire into central Damascus.

Relatives of people killed in and around the city cannot retrieve bodies before signing a mountain of paperwork absolving government forces of blame - just the first obstacle to be overcome before they can start a mourning process that is itself highly restricted.

Victims of violence cannot be described as "martyrs" in the death notices pasted on city walls and along narrow alleys unless they die fighting alongside President Bashar al-Assad's forces. Only vague phrases, such as "due to a tragic accident", are acceptable.

Bodies cannot be taken to mosques for funeral prayers in case they become a platform for anti-Assad protest.

And when mourners finally lay their loved one to rest, prayers are conducted in haste under the watchful eye of security forces who roam cemeteries to guard against the smallest display of anti-government sentiment.

The killing of a Damascus merchant, a distant relative of this reporter, at a checkpoint just a few weeks ago - a death described by his immediate family as random and unnecessary - highlighted both the new daily perils of Damascus life and the tribulations after death.

A trader in his 60s from the Old City in central Damascus, Aboudi was killed by a government sniper as his brother drove him and his son through a checkpoint on a morning errand to buy bread, his relatives told me. I have given only his family name to protect his identity.

The men passed through the area regularly and were known to the soldiers manning the checkpoint, who often waved them through. On this morning Aboudi's partially deaf brother saw a guard nod his assent, and drove through the checkpoint, unaware that another guard was shouting at him to stop.

A jittery conscript providing cover to the guards assumed the men were trying to flee and opened fire, killing Aboudi and wounding his brother and the young man in the back seat.

For the family, grief over their loss was compounded by the bureaucracy which followed.

"They had to sign papers that say it was terrorists who did it, and that the government had no role at all in his death," said Aboudi's daughter-in-law. "They didn't release the body until all forms were signed and sealed with thumb prints."

Describing her husband as "heart-broken" over his father's death, she said he and others in the neighborhood have vowed revenge on the soldier, who has not been seen since.

The dead man, popular in the Old City because of his reputation for giving money to the needy and poor, was buried in a muted ceremony without fanfare, under supervision of the security forces.

Family members said they were denied a full prayer service for him at a local mosque "for security reasons".

TWO STEPS FROM DEATH

Aboudi's killing was just one of many in a mounting death toll that is now part of everyday existence in the capital. Every Damascene today is just one or two degrees removed from the latest casualty.

On a daily basis we hear the sonic booms and air raids of fighter jets, the shelling from government-mounted missile batteries stationed in the hills overlooking north Damascus, and rocket and mortar fire from rebels on the outskirts.

Sometimes we count the shells; the other day we heard two dozen just seconds apart.

Another day, a Friday before midday prayers, I heard thuds and booms from the edge of the city as government MiG jets unleashed their bombs on the farming area of Sbeineh, where in happier days we went to get fresh air and pick apples.

The bombs also fell on Daraya, a working-class suburb that fell to the rebels months ago and has been reduced to a ghost town by relentless government shelling.

From my kitchen window, I saw black smoke rising from Daraya. Dense, acrid and slow-moving, it spread over the city, following a path taken by Daraya's families who have fled their district and dispersed around Damascus, doubled and tripled up in small flats with relatives.

One Daraya family of five has been squatting for months in the basement of my building, inside a cramped janitor's room.

FRUSTRATION

In these tense times, Damascenes complain of frustration and ennui. This is especially true on Fridays, the start of the Syrian weekend and the original day of protests in the early months of Syria's uprising, which has now spiraled into a civil war which the United Nations says has killed 70,000 people.

Determined to prevent protests, authorities increase security at checkpoints and deny entry to the city from the suburbs, questioning drivers within the city at length.

Nowadays hardly anyone goes out on a Friday, but I had promised to visit relatives so I ventured out, on foot to avoid questioning at checkpoints. The short walking tour brought home how the city has changed.

Damascus today feels smaller and emptier, shrunk to the dozen or so districts under government control known collectively as the 'Square of Security'. You can walk briskly from one end to the other in under two hours.

As it shrinks, Damascenes with a dark sense of humor have taken to calling it the Triangle of Security.

It includes the historic Old City, where the biblical Saint Paul walked on the Street Called Straight. All the city's major commercial districts are also in the Square-turned-Triangle, including the ancient bazaar and contemporary shopping malls.

It includes middle class districts, parliament, various ministries and intelligence branches. It is here that Assad and most government officials live.

Assad's forces are increasingly bringing artillery into the centre of this area, firing from the densely populated area towards the rebels outside.

"We hear it discharge and we hear it pierce the air," one of my friends told me.

"We hear its whistle as if it's flying past our window, and we hear it when it falls - the thud and the explosion," he said, adding that his whole family have been kept awake since the artillery was deployed in his neighborhood a few days ago.

"No matter how hard we try to get used to it, we get startled every time."

I once had many relatives and friends here. Most of them fled the country when the violence reached their doorstep and life became unbearable.

Such was the case of my cousin when I arrived to bid her farewell. Frazzled and unsure of the future, she and her husband had packed their belongings and were preparing for departure.

It was still light when I returned home. Back in my kitchen, as I prepared my dinner, I looked out the window and saw more smoke. The fighter jets were at their work.

(The journalist's name has been withheld for security reasons)

(Editing by Dominic Evans and Sonya Hepinstall)

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New app finds upcoming yoga classes wherever you are

Yoga enthusiasts perform an open air class in front of victory column 'Siegessaeule' in Berlin July 1, 2008.

Credit: Reuters/Hannibal Hanschke

By Natasha Baker

TORONTO | Mon Apr 15, 2013 5:14pm EDT

TORONTO (Reuters) - From hatha to vinyasa and everything in between, a new app helps yoga lovers find upcoming classes nearby.

Om finders, an iPhone app, detects a user's location and shows yoga classes happening at studios around them, including time and directions.

"The vision was to get more people on planet earth doing yoga," said Nancy Richardson, vice president of digital and brand strategy at Vancouver-based yoga apparel company Lululemon.

Classes can be found at nearly 7,000 studios in 63 countries worldwide and can be filtered by time and type, including hatha, power flow, vinyasa and hot yoga.

"It offers lots of different options to try different classes, types of yoga, and experience different teachers," Richardson said.

Yogis can also keep up with the schedules of their favorite instructors. The app has over 30,000 instructor profiles, which include a schedule of their upcoming classes.

According to Rachel Acheson, vice president of brand and community at Lululemon, the turnover for yoga is high. Although there are approximately 20 million people practicing yoga, about 20 percent drop out every year.

"The new people to yoga every year is substantial," said Acheson. "Finding your teacher is one of the biggest things that drives commitment to the practice."

Users can invite friends to join in on class by sending a text, tweet, email or Facebook message through the app, and keep track of the classes they're headed to.

The app launched Thursday and by Saturday had been downloaded over 18,000 times. It secured the top spot in the Health and Fitness category on Apple's App Store in Canada, and the third spot in the category in the U.S.

It is the first digital experience that the company has developed in-house, and is part of Lululemon's push towards creating hyper-local experiences for consumers.

"That connection with our guests and studio partners is happening on a local level," Richardson said. "Our digital strategy is people-first. Our goal is to build authentic relationships with communities."

Although users can add a class to their schedule, which syncs with the calendar app, it is not yet possible to book or pay for a class within the app.

"We're waiting to see what guests want, and we're not confident they're going to want to book," Richardson responded, adding that the company is actively monitoring feedback.

The company will continue to monitor demand for other platforms, but the company's customers are predominantly iPhone users, according to Richardson.

A similar app called Mindbody Yoga is available for iPhone, created by Mindbody, the company that supplies the data about classes, studios and instructors used in Om Finder.

It allows users to book and pay for classes if the studio supports that capability. It does not, however, provide the social features found in Om Finder, or information about in-store classes.

Another app called GoRecess, available on the web, allows users in the United States to find and book fitness classes in their cities, including yoga, strength-training, dance martial arts and boot camp classes.

(Editing by Paul Casciato)

View the original article here

Price of fame: Performers and sports stars die younger

By Belinda Goldsmith

LONDON | Wed Apr 17, 2013 7:18pm EDT

LONDON (Reuters) - The price of fame can be high with an international study on Thursday finding that people who enjoy successful entertainment or sporting careers tend to die younger.

Researchers Richard Epstein and Catherine Epstein said the study, based on analysing 1,000 New York Times obituaries from 2009-2011, found film, music, stage performers and sports people died at an average age of 77.2 years.

This compared to an average lifespan of 78.5 years for creative workers, 81.7 for professionals and academics, and 83 years for people in business, military and political careers.

The Australian-based researchers said these earlier deaths could indicate that performers and sports stars took more risks in life, either to reach their goals or due to their success.

"Fame and achievement in performance-related careers may be earned at the cost of a shorter life expectancy," the researchers wrote in their study published in QJM: An International Journal of Medicine.

"In such careers, smoking and other risk behaviors may be either causes of effects of success and/or early death."

Britain's most high-profile celebrity publicist, Max Clifford, said the pressure that celebrities and sports stars put on themselves to succeed had to play a part, and even at the top they were always worried about who could replace them.

"People assume that fame and success is all about riches and happiness but as someone who has worked with famous people for 45 years I know that is not the case," Clifford told Reuters.

"The success becomes like a drug to them that they have to have and they are always worried about losing it so they push and push and work harder and harder. You have to be competitive in these fields otherwise it will not work."

WARNING TO ASPIRING STARS

For the study the researchers separated the obituaries by gender, age, and cause of death as well as by occupation, with anyone involved in sports, acting, singing, music or dance put into a performance category.

Others were split into creative roles such as writing and visual arts, into a business, military and political category, or a group of professional, academic and religious careers.

The study found that the list was heavily skewed towards men who accounted for 813 of the obituaries and the main causes of earlier deaths were linked to accidents, infections including HIV, and cancer.

Lung cancer deaths - which the authors considered a sign of chronic smoking - were most common in performers.

Richard Epstein, a director at the Kinghorn Cancer Centre at Sydney's St Vincent's Hospital, acknowledged that the one-off analysis could not prove anything but raised interesting questions.

"If it is true that successful performers and sports players tend to enjoy shorter lives, does this imply that fame at younger ages predisposes to poor health behaviors in later life after success has faded?" he said.

He suggested maybe psychological and family pressures favouring high public achievement could lead to self-destructive tendencies or that risk-taking personality traits maximized the chances of success, with the use of cigarettes, alcohol or illicit drugs improving performance output in the short-term.

"Any of these hypotheses could be viewed as a health warning to young people aspiring to become stars," he said.

(Reporting by Belinda Goldsmith)

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Pope stands firm on reforming "radical feminist" U.S. nuns

Pope Francis holds a cross as he leads a solemn mass at Saint Paul's Basilica in Rome April 14, 2013.

Credit: Reuters/Max Rossi

By Philip Pullella

VATICAN CITY | Mon Apr 15, 2013 11:44am EDT

VATICAN CITY (Reuters) - Pope Francis has reaffirmed the Vatican's criticism of a body that represents U.S. nuns which the Church said was tainted by "radical" feminism, dashing hopes he might take a softer stand with the sisters.

Francis's predecessor, Benedict, decreed that the Leadership Conference of Women Religious (LCWR), a group that represents more than 80 percent of the 57,000 Catholic nuns in the United States, must change its ways, a ruling which the Vatican said on Monday still applied.

Last year, a Vatican report said the LCWR had "serious doctrinal problems" and promoted "radical feminist themes incompatible with the Catholic faith", criticizing it for taking a soft line on issues such as birth control and homosexuality.

The nuns received wide support among American Catholics, particularly on the liberal wing of the Church, as LCWR leaders travelled around the United States in a bus to defend themselves against the accusations.

On Monday the group's leaders met Archbishop Gerhard Ludwig Mueller, the new head of the Vatican's doctrinal department, and Archbishop Peter Sartain of Seattle, who has been assigned by the Vatican to correct the group's perceived failings.

"Archbishop Mueller informed the (LCWR) presidency that he had recently discussed the doctrinal assessment with Pope Francis, who reaffirmed the findings of the assessment and the program of reform, " the Vatican's statement said.

The Vatican reminded the group that it would "remain under the direction of the Holy See," the statement said.

It was the nuns' first meeting with Mueller, who succeeded American Cardinal William Levada as head of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith. Levada, who retired last year, oversaw the Vatican's investigation of the U.S. nuns.

A statement from the LCWR said the "conversation was open and frank" and added: "We pray that these conversations may bear fruit for the good of the Church".

In April 2012, the doctrinal department criticized the LCWR for challenging bishops and for being "silent on the right to life," saying it had failed to make the "Biblical view of family life and human sexuality" a central plank of its agenda.

The nuns supported President Barack Obama's healthcare reform, part of which makes insurance coverage of birth control mandatory, while U.S. bishops opposed it.

Many nuns said the Vatican's report misunderstood their intentions and undervalued their work for social justice.

Supporters of the nuns said the women had helped the image of the Church in the United States at a time when it was engulfed in scandal over sexual abuse of minors by priests. They were praised by many fellow Catholics and the media for their work with the poor and sick.

Monday's Vatican statement expressed gratitude for the "great contribution" American Catholic nuns had made in teaching and caring for the sick and poor.

(Reporting By Philip Pullella)

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Burgeoning IT sector aims to reverse Palestinian economic rot

1 of 6. An employee stands in front of a file cabinet at Isra Software & Computer Co., an e-commerce firm in the West Bank city of Nablus April 8, 2013.

Credit: Reuters/Mohamad Torokman

By Noah Browning

NABLUS, West Bank | Wed Apr 17, 2013 10:08am EDT

NABLUS, West Bank (Reuters) - Nestled in a basin in the northern West Bank, the city of Nablus was for millennia a Palestinian cultural and commercial hub, attracting traders to its souk in the heart of the old town.

But Israel's occupation of the West Bank, and local policy paralysis, have since isolated the Palestinian economy from global markets and pushed unemployment up to nearly 25 percent.

Fledgling Palestinian high-tech firms hope they can now help revitalize the economy, making the West Bank more resistant to Israeli controls on land and the movement of goods and people and less dependent on fickle foreign aid flows, which are blighting the public sector.

"We're far, far away from being Silicon Valley," conceded Husam Dweikat, general manager of Isra Software & Computer Co., an e-commerce firm with 35 employees based near the old city.

"Still, we can become a sector that transforms the future of the Palestinian economy, despite the fact the Israeli occupation and our government have deprived us of the right infrastructure, skills and exposure," Dweikat said.

The information and communications technology (ICT) sector, which includes telecommunications, contributed 6.1 percent of Palestinian gross domestic product by 2011, a more than seven-fold increase since 2008.

Relatively high rates of computer literacy and English language skills compared to Arab neighbors offer advantages.

Paradoxically, proximity to Israel is also a boon. A powerhouse of global ICT, Israel provides Palestinian IT companies with outsourcing work from multinational firms that have subsidiaries in Netanya and Tel Aviv, just 20 kilometers from the West Bank.

Those companies are taking advantage of cheaper labor in the West Bank compared to Israel and a strong local skillset, and have also cited corporate social responsibility as a reason to invest there.

U.S.-based Cisco Systems, the world's largest maker of networking equipment, along with other tech partners and the European Investment Bank have pumped $78 million into developing the sector since 2008, raising the profile of the Palestinian industry abroad and providing valuable know-how.

Yet business owners still speak of horror stories trying to import hardware past Israeli authorities, who impose strict curbs on materials they deem a security risk, and of travel problems which deter potential clients.

"Try landing in (Tel Aviv's) Ben Gurion airport and telling Israeli passport control you have business in Palestine - it doesn't work so well," said Abeer Hazboun, general manager of the Palestinian Information Technology Association (PITA), which represents more than 100 ICT firms.

Israel has denied Palestinian companies access to the 3G frequency, key to innovating in the mobile phone app market, granting it to Israeli firms serving Jewish settlers instead.

Israel captured the West Bank, East Jerusalem and Gaza in the 1967 Middle East War, and built Jewish settlements across much of the territory. Palestinians, who number 2.65 million, wish to establish an independent state and want the half a million Jewish settlers to depart.

U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry, on a round of shuttle diplomacy last week, said Israeli and Palestinian leaders had agreed to unveil shortly a U.S.-backed plan to relieve the "bottlenecks and barriers" to economic growth in the West Bank.

Infrastructure rebuilding helped the aid-dependent Palestinian economy average 11 percent growth in 2010-11 but the World Bank predicts growth will more than halve to 5 percent this year, again driven by construction.

Rising unemployment and soaring prices helped sink the popularity of U.S.-backed Prime Minister Salam Fayyad, who resigned on Saturday after months of tension with President Mahmoud Abbas.

Many businessmen say years of high costs and limited reforms have made it difficult to boost growth.

"Somebody needs to come up with a plan. The emphasis on bureaucracy that's been built up is an impediment to private sector growth," said Tareq Maayah, head of Exalt Technologies, a Palestinian company.

Exalt does research and development of software and mobile phone technologies outsourced by companies like Cisco, Hewlett-Packard and French-American group Alcatel-Lucent and is one of the sector's biggest and most profitable companies.

VOLATILE REVENUES

In the shade of Nablus's al-Najah University campus - Arabic for "success" - 28-year-old freelance web programmer Abdullah Yaseen clicks away at his bulky PC.

Since he graduated six years ago, he has marketed his services through social network elance.com and has devised computer programs for a range of U.S. websites from America's Home Shopping Network to U.S.-based consultancy RES. He is the lead engineer of its offshore IT solutions branch, RESpodo.

"All I need is my laptop and the Internet," Yaseen said. "Most of my friends go and look for work with the (Palestinian) Authority, because a government job is fixed, easy. Me, I don't think this way."

Many of the 2,500 Palestinian graduates specializing in computer science each year, however, cannot find steady work and seek jobs abroad.

Nearly a quarter of the Palestinian labor force is employed in the public sector, but unstable government revenues means wages are volatile.

The United States withdrew aid money last year after the Palestinians successfully bid for a status upgrade at the United Nations, while Israel withheld customs tax revenues it collects on Palestinians' behalf.

Declining state revenues, and a shortfall in aid from Arab states distracted by unrest at home, have frequently delayed public sector salary payments, setting off strikes and protests.

The shortfall has also left the Palestinian Authority (PA) with a recurring deficit and external debt, both of about 1 billion dollars, or nearly a fifth of gross domestic product.

The private sector meanwhile is held back by Israeli curbs on land, water and movement. Around 40 percent of all Palestinian workers are employed by small enterprises of around three or four employees making low-cost products mostly for the domestic market.

Since the 1993 Oslo Peace accords gave Palestinians partial self-rule, upheaval has repeatedly challenged economic progress.

Hazboun of the Palestinian IT association said that had implanted a mindset among Palestinians that there was no confidence that the economy could prosper.

"ICT can help counter this with its emphasis on innovation and a knowledge economy," she said.

A wave of Palestinian suicide bombings during the second Palestinian Intifada in 2000-2005, or uprising, was countered by numerous Israeli incursions that wrecked local infrastructure. A violent rift between the Palestinian Fatah and Hamas parties in 2006 paralyzed parliament and prevented economic reform.

Sabri Saidam, an economic adviser to President Abbas, said developing the IT sector would provide opportunities for the territory's brightest young people.

"But no Palestinian will ever accept economic development as a substitute for our national liberation," he said.

Still, outsourcing work from international firms based in Israel is helping to counter an unequal economic relationship in which the Palestinian market is mostly captive to Israeli goods, Maayah of Exalt said.

"Go into a supermarket here and what do you see? Eighty percent of the produce is Israeli. By outsourcing, it's us selling to them. This pushes the economic balance in our favor," he said.

(Editing by Susan Fenton)

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Makers of fraudulent breast implants on trial in France

1 of 7. Members of the court arrive for the start of the trial of PIP breast implant company at the improvised courthouse in Marseille, April 17, 2013.

Credit: Reuters/Jean-Paul Pelissier

MARSEILLE, France (Reuters) - Five French executives went on trial on Wednesday to jeers from victims for supplying women with hundreds of thousands of substandard breast implants and triggering a global health scare.

More than 300,000 women around the world were fitted over a decade with implants from the French company Poly Implant Prothese (PIP), and the trial includes 5,000 civil plaintiffs and 300 lawyers.

PIP's founder and long-time chief executive, 73-year-old Jean-Claude Mas, has admitted filling the implants with an unapproved homemade recipe made of industrial-grade silicone gel.

Mas and four PIP executives, including the chief financial officer, are charged with aggravated fraud and risk maximum prison terms of five years each, plus fines, for selling the implants around the world from 2001 to 2010, when they were ordered off the market.

Mas himself was in court an hour before the start of proceedings, which were mostly taken up with opening day legal arguments. "He bears the enormous weight of this trial on his shoulders," Mas's lawyer Yves Haddad said.

A vast exhibition building close to PIP's former premises has been set up as a makeshift courtroom to accommodate the huge crowds expected for the trial, due to last until mid-May.

Mas arrived at court under police escort and faced a crush of cameras as the trial began in the southern city of Marseille.

"Bastard!" shouted someone in the audience of some 300 victims as Mas appeared live on a giant video screen.

Of the more than 5,000 individual lawsuits filed against PIP - once the world's third-largest supplier of breast implants - and its executives, 220 have come from women outside France.

A French woman who alleges that one of her PIP implants began to leak four years after its insertion said outside the courtroom that victims were both scared and angry.

"We had foreign bodies put inside us that were flawed ... we could have maybe died from it. The anger is because we were tricked," said Tomassine Catalano. "It's frightening."

Leaving court, Mas sought to defend himself against such charges. "For 30 years I made prostheses," he told journalists. "I did my best to protect them (women)."

RUSH FOR REMOVAL

The scandal - revealed after inspectors pursuing a tip-off discovered vats of industrial-grade silicone outside the PIP factory in 2010 - sparked worldwide panic when the government recommended removal of the implants due to an abnormally high rupture rate.

Health experts say no link has been established between PIP implants and breast cancer, but in the months after the scandal broke, plastic surgeons around the world reported a flood of removal requests from worried patients.

Half the French women with PIP implants, or nearly 15,000, have already opted for removal, whether because of rupture or as a precaution, according to the government.

Mas was released in October from eight months in detention following a failure to post bail. He told police that 75 percent of PIP's implants had contained the homemade gel, which was never been approved by regulators, although he denies it was unsafe. He and the other executives deny the charges.

Investigators estimate that Mas's formula allowed PIP to save nearly $1.6 million in one year alone.

When Mas told the court he lived on a modest monthly retirement income of 1,800 euros, hoots erupted from the spectators, prompting the judge to warn that the next person to disrupt proceedings would be thrown out.

Minutes before the trial began, a court in Paris rejected a defense request to have the case thrown out.

Mas and PIP's former chief financial officer, Claude Couty are separately implicated in a civil case over fiscal fraud that has yet to reach trial. Mas is also under investigation for manslaughter following a complaint from the mother of a French woman with PIP implants who died of cancer in 2010.

($1 = 0.7616 euros)

(Additional reporting by Lucien Libert; Writing By Alexandria Sage; Editing by Kevin Liffey)

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Los Angeles touts architectural history in new exhibition

The iconic Theme Building of Los Angeles International Airport is shown in this 1961 architectural rendering released to Reuters on April 13, 2013. Los Angeles is often seen as a sprawling, smoggy concrete metropolis or a kitschy Hollywood movie set but that image is getting a shiny new makeover in an exhibition that highlights the city's often overlooked contributions to modern architecture. ''Overdrive: L.A. Constructs the Future, 1940-1990,'' takes stock of the city's booming post-World War Two growth, shining a light on buildings that often go unnoticed by the 18 million people living in a metropolitan area about the size of Belgium.

Credit: Reuters/Image courtesy of and © The Luckman Partnership, Inc. | a Salas O'Brien Company/Handout

By Eric Kelsey

LOS ANGELES | Mon Apr 15, 2013 4:05pm EDT

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - Los Angeles is often seen as a sprawling, smoggy concrete metropolis or a kitschy Hollywood movie set but that image is getting a shiny new makeover in an exhibition that highlights the city's often overlooked contributions to modern architecture.

"Overdrive: L.A. Constructs the Future, 1940-1990," takes stock of the city's booming post-World War Two growth, shining a light on buildings that often go unnoticed by the 18 million people living in a metropolitan area about the size of Belgium.

"People don't think about Los Angeles in architectural and design terms," exhibition curator Wim de Wit told Reuters. "People think about Los Angeles as an accident that sort of happened."

"Overdrive," part of the Pacific Standard Time Presents regional initiative of 11 exhibitions, presents Los Angeles as an architectural dream factory on a par with Hollywood's influence on post-war moviemaking.

It is housed at the Getty Center museum - itself regarded as a modern architectural jewel atop a Los Angeles mountain - through July 21.

"There are so many myths and clichés that are just misunderstandings," de Wit said. "We're trying to straighten out and create different views of Los Angeles as a city ... One point we're trying to make is that it's a planned city with thought behind it."

The exhibition, which features photographs, architectural drawings, models and films, shows how those plans crafted in the 1940s and 1950s were unparalleled in their time, setting up what de Wit calls a "laboratory" for modern living.

Indeed, the area's vast freeway system was able to connect far-flung suburbs to the city's center while Los Angeles International Airport was the first of its kind to create modern terminals amenable to automobile traffic.

"The big difference between the prewar and postwar Los Angeles architecture was chiefly a matter of scale, and one of the major manifestations of this was the freeway system," said Thomas Hines, an architectural historian at the University of California, Los Angeles.

CITY AS 'OPEN BOOK'

The city's growth, aided by new materials developed in the local aerospace industry, and modernist styles influenced the rebuilding of Europe and Japan after World War Two, Hines said.

"The consensus would be that Los Angeles and Southern California have been one of the half dozen or so most important places in the world in the development of modern architecture," he said, noting the roots of its heritage in the prewar designs of architects Richard Neutra and Rudolph Schindler.

Highlights include Los Angeles airport's 1961 theme building with its futuristic floating structure, as well as the prefabricated steel and glass Case Study houses (1945-1966), which were promoted to the world through Arts & Architecture magazine.

Star architect Frank Gehry's free-form Walt Disney Concert Hall, completed in 2003, figures prominently as a legacy to the experimentation, along with mid-century coffee shops with floor-to-ceiling glass inspired by jet-age automobile showrooms.

Pritzker Prize-winning Los Angeles architect Thom Mayne says the city holds a unique position because it was the center of innovation and experimentation, as opposed to the more architecturally orthodox cities like Boston and New York.

"Los Angeles is an open book," said Mayne, who along with Gehry was a major figure in new architecture coming out of the city in the 1970s and 1980s.

"People here are always looking for the future that never arrives," Mayne said. "Every generation is looking for this openness and laissez-faire attitude. It made it an extremely unusual place ... Everybody was stopping in L.A."

(Reporting by Eric Kelsey; Editing by Jill Serjeant and Bill Trott)

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Cheers, applause as New Zealand legalizes same-sex marriage

By Naomi Tajitsu

Rpt-WELLINGTON | Wed Apr 17, 2013 7:21pm EDT

Rpt-WELLINGTON (Reuters) - New Zealand's parliament voted in favor of allowing same-sex marriage on Wednesday, prompting cheers, applause and the singing of a traditional Maori celebratory song from the public gallery.

Seventy-seven of 121 members of parliament voted in favor of amending the current 1955 Marriage Act to allow same-sex couples to marry, making New Zealand the first country in the Asia-Pacific region to do so.

"Two-thirds of parliament have endorsed marriage equality," Louisa Wall, the openly gay opposition Labour Party MP who promoted the bill, told reporters after the vote. "It shows that we are building on our human rights as a country."

The bill was widely expected to pass, given similar support for the change in a preliminary vote held last month. It will likely come into effect in August.

New Zealand becomes the 13th country to legalize same-sex marriages, after Uruguay passed its own law last week. Australia last year rejected a similar proposal.

Countries where such marriages are legal include Canada, Spain and Sweden, in addition to some states in the United States. France is close to legalizing same-sex marriages amid increasingly vocal opposition.

The bill was opposed by the Roman Catholic Church and some conservative religious, political and social groups which campaigned that it would undermine the institution of the family.

The law makes it clear that clergy can decline to preside in gay marriages if they conflict with their beliefs.

The law to allow same-sex marriages comes after New Zealand gave same-sex relationships partial legal recognition in 2005 with the establishment of civil unions.

"I have a boyfriend, so it means we can get married, which is a good thing," said Timothy Atkin, a student who was among a crowd listening to the hearing in the parliamentary lobby.

"It's important to be seen as equal under the law."

(Reporting by Naomi Tajitsu; Editing by Nick Macfie)

(This story was refiled to correct name to "Timothy Atkin" from "Timothy Atkins" in the 10th paragraph)

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How a student took on eminent economists on debt issue - and won

Harvard Professor and Economist Kenneth Rogoff speaks during the Sohn Investment Conference in New York, May 16, 2012.

Credit: Reuters/Eduardo Munoz

By Edward Krudy

NEW YORK | Thu Apr 18, 2013 5:54am EDT

NEW YORK (Reuters) - When Thomas Herndon, a student at the University of Massachusetts Amherst's doctoral program in economics, spotted possible errors made by two eminent Harvard economists in an influential research paper, he called his girlfriend over for a second look.

As they poured over the spreadsheets Herndon had requested from Harvard's Carmen Reinhart and Kenneth Rogoff, which formed the basis for a widely quoted 2010 study, they spotted what they believed were glaring errors.

"I almost didn't believe my eyes when I saw just the basic spreadsheet error," said Herndon, 28. "I was like, am I just looking at this wrong? There has to be some other explanation. So I asked my girlfriend, 'Am I seeing this wrong?'"

His girlfriend, Kyla Walters, replied: "I don't think so Thomas."

In the world of economic luminaries, it doesn't get much bigger than Reinhart and Rogoff, whose work has had enormous influence in one of the biggest economic policy debates of the age.

Both have served at the International Monetary Fund. Reinhart was a chief economist at investment bank Bear Stearns in the 1980s, while Rogoff worked at the Federal Reserve, passing through Yale and MIT before landing at Harvard.

Their study, which found economic growth slows dramatically when a government's debt exceeds 90 percent of a country's annual economic output, has been cited by policymakers around the world as justification for slashing spending.

Former U.S. vice presidential candidate Paul Ryan, a Republican congressman from Wisconsin, is one influential politician who has cited the report to justify a budget slashing agenda.

Using the two professors' data, Herndon found that instead of a dramatic fall in growth, the decline was much milder, slowing to about 2.2 percent, instead of the slump to minus 0.1 percent that Reinhart and Rogoff predicted.

Things tend to move at a glacial pace in the world of academic research papers, but within 24 hours Herndon and his two teachers, who co-authored the report, Michael Ash and Robert Pollin, found themselves swept up in a global debate.

Herndon's paper began life as a replication exercise for a term paper in a graduate econometrics class. He expected to replicate Reinhart and Rogoff's results, then challenge the idea that high public debt caused growth to slow.

But he never got that far. Repeated failures to replicate the results roused his interest. Pollin and Ash encouraged him to pursue it after he convinced them he was onto something.

"At first, I didn't believe him. I thought, 'OK he's a student, he's got to be wrong. These are eminent economists and he's a graduate student,'" Pollin said. "So we pushed him and pushed him and pushed him, and after about a month of pushing him I said, 'Goddamn it, he's right.'"

Herndon approached Reinhart and Rogoff earlier this year for the spreadsheets they used in their paper. The two professors provided them at the start of April, unlocking the mysteries of the data that had stumped Herndon.

Herndon said only 15 of the 20 countries in the report had been used in the average. He also said Reinhart and Rogoff used only one year of data for New Zealand, 1951, when growth was minus 7.6 percent, significantly skewing the results.

Reinhart and Rogoff have admitted to a "coding error" in the spreadsheet that meant some countries were omitted from their calculations. But the economists denied they selectively omitted data or that they used a questionable methodology.

For Ash, the findings mean the claim that high public debt causes growth to stall no longer holds water.

"Their central thesis has been substantially weakened," he said.

Reinhart and Rogoff, however, say their conclusion that there is a correlation between high debt and slow growth still holds.

"It is sobering that such an error slipped into one of our papers despite our best efforts to be consistently careful," they said in a joint statement. "We do not, however, believe this regrettable slip affects in any significant way the central message of the paper or that in our subsequent work."

Now that Herndon has ably crossed swords with some of the most eminent figures in his field, he is thinking about expanding his work into a Ph.D. thesis.

(Reporting By Edward Krudy; Editing by Stacey Joyce)

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French food by way of Italy - in Hong Kong

A dish named One Side Grilled Pigeon with Brunoise of Chorizo and Squid by chef Philippe Leveille is displayed at L’Altro in Hong Kong September 10, 2012. With his newly-opened restaurant in Hong Kong named L'Altro - ''the Other'' - Leveille, the two-starred Michelin chef at Miramonti L'altro in Brescia, Italy for more than a decade now. is discovering new ways to adapt and innovate his cuisine in an Asian setting.

Credit: Reuters/L’altro, Hong Kong/Handout

By Cathy Yang

Hong Kong | Tue Apr 16, 2013 4:27am EDT

Hong Kong (Reuters) - Ask where Chef Philippe Leveille comes from, and he'll declare that he's Italian, although his cuisine is unmistakably French.

That's because the 49-year-old native of Nantes, France, has lived in Italy for over 25 years, making a name for himself on the culinary scene by combining French cooking techniques with traditional Italian fare.

With his newly-opened restaurant in Hong Kong named L'Altro - "the Other" - Leveille, the two-starred Michelin chef at Miramonti L'altro in Brescia, Italy for more than a decade now. is discovering new ways to adapt and innovate his cuisine in an Asian setting.

Leveille spoke with Reuters about how Hong Kong is influencing his cooking in this, his first foray into Asia.

Q: How did you get started with cooking?

A: I started culinary school when I was 15. As my father used to be an oyster farmer, I was since a kid in touch with the world of restaurants and deeply fascinated by (those chefs) whom at that time were creating the haute French cuisine, first of all French Chef Paul Bocuse and Alain Senderens and the Troisgros family.

Q: What do you think of the Hong Kong culinary scene?

A: I believe Hong Kong's culinary scene is very interesting because it can embrace many different gastronomic realities, and at the same time, there's a lot of healthy competition with several great chefs that keep yourself growing and growing.

Q: Your restaurant L'Altro in Hong Kong offers traditional Italian gourmet fare with a French twist. How did you come up with that idea?

A: Very easy for me since I am a French (person) living already 25 years in Italy.

Q: How do you find the Hong Kong and Chinese clientele who have so far tried your cuisine at L'Altro?

A: I find the local clients very prepared and very curious about my cuisine, especially about discovering the different textures belonging to the Italian cuisine. The palate of the Chinese is more delicate compared to the European one, that´s the reason why I slowly reduced the concentration of the flavors and the saltiness of the dishes, using on the other hand more spices in the preparations.

Q: You're keen on experiencing different views of kitchen all over the world and using new products, cooking techniques and technologies. How is Hong Kong and the surrounding Asian region influencing your cooking?

A: Actually the biggest influence of Hong Kong in my cuisine is my discovery of new products, new vegetables, several kinds of soya sauce. Hong Kong made me also try to slightly "unburden" my cuisine, meaning using the fats in a moderate way, concentrating the flavors less than normal.

Q: What else would you like to try as a chef that you haven't done before?

A: I would love one day to have the possibility to prepare a "four hands dinner" (where two chefs are cooking together) with Chef Bocuse for my clients and colleagues. That would be a great honor.

Q: What are your two favorite dishes?

A: The dish of my heart since I´m a kid is cassoulet. The two dishes representing better my cuisine are the Miramonti Gelato and the One Side Grilled Pigeon with Brunoise of Chorizo and Squid.

ONE SIDE GRILLED PIGEON Pigeon - For one portion about 500 grams (1 lb) Garlic - 1.7 t (5 grams) Olive oil - 2.2 t (10 grams) Squid - 1.8 oz (50 grams) Chorizo - 1 oz(30 grams) Foie gras - 1 oz (30 grams Cream - 6 T (90 grams) Bisque - 2 t (10 grams)(already concentrated) Description: 1. Mix the garlic with the oil and lightly dress the previously boned pigeon meat. Grill on one side. 2. Cut in brunoise the squid and the chorizo, in proportions 3 to 1. Dress with oil, salt, and pepper. 3. Pan fry the foie gras, add to the cream previously reduced by one third. Add some of the reduced bisque, salt, and pepper and mix. Strain the sauce and pour on the pigeon.

(Editing by Elaine Lies)

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