Manhunt for Charlie Hebdo Attack Suspects Continues

PARIS — The French authorities carried out an intense manhunt on Thursday for the two brothers who are suspected of mounting the deadly terrorist attack on the Paris office of the newspaper Charlie Hebdo that left a dozen dead. Officials detained and questioned seven people overnight in connection with the assault.

Xavier Castaing, a spokesman for the Paris police, said that two men who resembled the suspects had been spotted in the Aisne region northeast of Paris. News reports said that the two men who were seen there had robbed a gas station, and that police forces were swarming the area, searching for the car they were using.

Even as France observed a moment of silence in remembrance of the victims of the Wednesday attack, there were unnerving reports on Thursday of the killing of a police officer and a street sweeper in a southern Paris suburb, and accounts of attacks on mosques in other parts of France..

Prime Minister Manuel Valls of France said in an interview on RTL radio that the authorities’ main concern was preventing another terrorist attack. He issued a plea for witnesses to contact the police with any relevant information.

The two chief suspects in the Charlie Hebdo attack were identified as Said Kouachi, 34, and his younger brother Chérif, 32. The authorities searched for them on Thursday across a wide area of northern France. A third suspect, Hamyd Mourad, 18, turned himself in at a police station in Charleville-Mézières, about 145 miles northeast of Paris.

Bernard Cazeneuve, the interior minister, confirmed that seven people were detained overnight in connection with the case, but he offered no details on their ties, if any, to the Kouachi brothers.

Two American officials said on Thursday that the Kouachi brothers had ties to Al Qaeda’s affiliate in Yemen, but the officials declined to say whether that meant the suspects had been in communication with the group or had traveled there and perhaps received training. The officials cited the ongoing investigation.

 more read http://www.nytimes.com/2015/01/09/world/europe/charlie-hebdo-terrorist-attack.html?_r=0

‘American Horror Story: Freak Show’ Season 4 Episode 12 Recap: “Magical Thinking”

Ryan Murphy and co. left us in 2014 with Freak Show‘s most convincingly emotional episode. That same episode, “Orphans,” did little to advance the plot of the show, save for hinting that Elsa does, in fact, become a television star. This week, it’s become apparent that, with so few episodes left in the season, they’re itching to get some things out of the way, but they’re doing it by.. introducing a new character.





We start at the jail with Stanley trying to convince Jimmy to give him his claws in order to pay for a proper defense. (You’ll remember that Jimmy was locked up for killing a Tupperware party full of women, a crime Dandy committed.) Stanley gives Jimmy a substance to induce vomiting, and then a hired hand — a male prostitute — is there with an ambulance to take him away. Jimmy wakes up, finds himself in a pretty rough hospital with both his hands chopped off. He screams, but what was he expecting? For Stanley to take only one?
Dell visits him in prison, feeds him, and does stuff like a dad. (“I’m 50 years old and this is the first time I’ve fed my son.”) Dell explains that he was the only man in his family to not have ectrodactyly, being a kind of freak for being normal. Jimmy tells him that he wants to buy the freak show from Elsa. They’re both really excited about it.
Dell returns to the campground, where he and Amazon Eve scheme to have Jimmy rescued. It doesn’t take much doing: They simply smash the window of his police escort, kill the guards, and unshackle Jimmy.
Meanwhile, Bette and Dot, determined to work as partners and no longer dying to be separating from each other, are set on having their virginity taken by any man the two can agree on. They set their eyes on Chester (Neil Patrick Harris), a traveling salesman and magician who doesn’t quite see things how they are, thanks to a metal plate in his head. He’s also got a friend, Marjorie, a dummy that may or may not be alive. The two of them are allowed to stay at the freak show if he does some bookkeeping for Elsa. It’s honestly a surprise that this is the first time a creepy-ass doll has ever been used in AHS.
Chester enlists Bette and Dot as his assistants in his magic show in which he cuts someone in half. During this scene, we get a little bit of a flashback to something ambiguous that involves Chester, with Marjorie on his lap, sitting in the corner of a bedroom as two women have sex on a bed right in front of him.
Soon, Bette and Dot come on to him in his room, make out with him until he’s overcome with the screeching of the metal plate in his head. We get another glimpse into his past, and see that it’s his wife and another woman having sex. He snaps out of it and, after picking up and placing his hand inside of Marjorie (“She relaxes me”), has sex with Bette and Dot.
Cut to Dandy, who receives pictures from a private detective he’s hired to spy on Bette and Dot. He’s not very happy about their sleeping with Chester.
We then see another bit of Chester’s past, with his wife’s lover calling Chester a freak, and a humanized Marjorie (Jamie Brewer) telling him to kill his wife and her lover. And then, back in the present, he buys the freak show from Elsa.
The cops, looking for the escaped Jimmy, eventually show up to the campgrounds. They find nothing, but Chester is distraught over the disappearance of Marjorie. He wanders the campgrounds, shouting Marjorie’s name, and finds Dandy. He’s taken Marjorie, and he knows about Chester’s past: He — or Marjorie, depending on if the show’s depiction of it is to be trusted — killed both his wife and her lover. He eventually finds Marjorie, again humanized, in the big tent and she tells him that he has to saw the twins in half.
Dell returns to the campgrounds and finds Desiree in his camper. She confronts him, asks him who he’s killed. He confesses to the killing of the cops. But Desiree knows that Dell killed Ma Petite — and she brought her back from Philadelphia. Dell admits to it, and when he does, Elsa executes him from behind. Another excellent actor wasted on a shitty, undeveloped American Horror Story character, and another unceremonious, ineffective death.
Read more http://flavorwire.com/497731/american-horror-story-freak-show-season-4-episode-12-recap-magical-thinking

A white police officer shot a black teenager to death at a gas station in the city next door to Ferguson

A white police officer shot a black teenager to death at a gas station in the city next door to Ferguson, Missouri, touching off clashes early Wednesday between demonstrators and law enforcement.

The mayor said that video from the confrontation, in the city of Berkeley, appeared to show the teenager pointing a gun at the officer, and police said a handgun was recovered at the scene. Police said the officer feared for his life.

"This was not the same as Ferguson," Mayor Theodore Hoskins said.

He took pains to say that the shooting could not be compared to the police killing of Michael Brown in Ferguson or to the chokehold death of Eric Garner in New York. The mayor, who is black, pointed out that the Berkeley police department is majority-black.

He promised a thorough investigation but said that the video showed it was not a police officer going off "half-cocked." 

"Everybody don't die the same," he told reporters. "Some people die because the policeman initiated. Some people die because they initiated it. And at this point, our review indicates that the police did not initiate this, like Ferguson." 

A woman at the scene who identified herself as Toni Martin told NBC affiliate KSDK that the victim was her son, Antonio Martin, 18.

She said Martin was on his way to meet his girlfriend when the fatal encounter happened and that he was not carrying a gun. "He only just left the house to go see her," she said.

The mother said Antonio turned 18 in September and had attended nearby Jennings High School, and that she was trying to get him enrolled in the Jobs Corps employment program. She spoke as the body still lay covered on the ground outside the Mobil gas station.

"They got my baby laying out there. He's been out there for about two hours," she said.

The shooting took place just after 11 p.m. local time Tuesday. Chief Jon Belmar of the St. Louis County police said that the officer was white and a six-year veteran. The officer's name was not released. He was placed on administrative leave, Belmar said.

He said that the officer fired at least three rounds and that the victim did not fire any.

"These are nothing but tragedies," Belmar said as he offered his condolences to the victim's family. The officer "will have to carry the weight of this for the rest of his life," he said, adding: "There are no winners here." 

Read more http://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/fatal-cop-shooting-teen-berkeley-missouri-sparks-clashes-n274181

Santa tracker 2014: Follow Santa Claus as he delivers presents around the world

COLORADO SPRINGS, Colo. — NORAD’s Santa Tracker is up and running at noradsanta.org as Santa Clause makes his storybook Christmas Eve flight.

The volunteers will spend Wednesday answering phone calls and emails from children and posting updates on the mythical journey to Facebook, Twitter and http://www.NORADSanta.org.
The Santa Tracker started in 1955 when a newspaper offered a phone number where children could call and find out where in the world Santa was at that moment.
The phone number it listed was for the Continental Aerospace Defense Command, the predecessor to the North American Aerospace Defense Command. The officers on duty played along and began passing along reports on Santa’s progress.
These days technology helps children keep track of Ol’ St. Nick.  Updates are posted at noradsanta.org, facebook.com/noradsanta and twitter.com/NoradSanta.

The Stanta Tracker website was launched in 1997 and peaked at 22.3 million in 2012.
Read More http://kdvr.com/2014/12/24/santa-tracker-2014-follow-santa-claus-as-he-delivers-presents-around-the-world/

In Its Strange Journey, 'The Interview' Becomes An Art House Film

The Alamo Drafthouse theater chain will show The Interview starting on Christmas Day.

Paul J. Richards/AFP/Getty Images

A buddy flick about killing North Korean dictator Kim Jung Un will be shown on Christmas Day after all, at least in about 200 independent theaters. This kind of small-scale distribution model and the politics surrounding The Interview give what was once a big-budget Hollywood release the spirit of an art house film.

In the satirical film, which is at the center of a geopolitical tussle, Seth Rogen and James Franco play television producers who get an interview with Kim but are then hired by the CIA to "take him out."
The reaction to this film from one of the most cutoff countries on Earth — and from its leader — came quickly. North Korea went to the United Nations trying to get the film banned. In November came a hack of Sony Pictures, the studio behind the film, that the FBI links to North Koreans.
Subsequent threats invoking Sept. 11 led major theater chains to say they wouldn't show it. But when Sony pulled the film from release last week, President Obama joined a chorus of Americans expressing their disappointment.
"We cannot have a society in which some dictator someplace can start imposing censorship in the United States," Obama said on Friday.
Then, 48 hours before the film's original opening day, Sony changed its mind. It uncanceled The Interview after independent theater operators started an online petition to show the film.
"It's kinda classic little-guy stuff that we support. I think it's really important that there's small places that can take a stand," says Hadrian Belove, executive director of the Cinefamily, a nonprofit cinema in Los Angeles. The Cinefamily will screen the film.
Now it's the little guys — a couple of hundred independent theaters — that get to run a big-budget film originally set for broad release. The Atlanta's Plaza Theater is among them. So is the Austin-based Alamo Drafthouse chain.
Read more
http://www.npr.org/blogs/alltechconsidered/2014/12/24/372765023/in-its-strange-journey-the-interview-becomes-an-art-house-film

'Tis the season for mangling Christmas phrases (+video)

The holiday season offers revelers countless opportunities to stumble over archaic English phrases, unlikely homonyms, and unexamined carol lyrics.

An Arizona woman trims her Christmas tree in her own way, in 1997.

Lo, though centuries dark and deep cometh the yuletide vocabulary donned now by the Google doodle so we can all fa-la-la-la-la our collective Christmas bliss back a few centuries and, in so doing, find comfort and joy in words and phrases that both gain and lose meaning with age.
This leads us to the 12 dazes of Christmas.
1. ‘Tis, it’s, it is and t’is the season for confusion over the spelling, meaning, pronunciation and lyrics using Old (Olde?) English-ish words and phrases that ‘twere in carols and Christmas tales back in the day.

Recommended: How well do you know global Christmas traditions? Take our quiz!

For the record, it’s correctly rendered "‘tis" which is a contraction of "it is." The rule with contractions is that we put the apostrophes where the letters, not the spaces, are missing.

"‘Tis" and "‘twas" largely became verbally extinct in the late 1800s, we bring them back to life each holiday season like dinosaurs in Jurassic Park, with much the same bizarre results.

 

Read more http://www.csmonitor.com/The-Culture/2014/1223/Tis-the-season-for-mangling-Christmas-phrases-video

 

 

 

 

Joe Cocker Is Dead at 70; Raspy-Voiced Rock Star With Distinctive Moves

Joe Cocker onstage at Woodstock in 1969. Credit Don Hogan Charles

Joe Cocker, the gravelly British singer who became one of pop’s most recognizable interpreters in the late 1960s and ’70s with passionate, idiosyncratic takes on songs like the Beatles’ “With a Little Help From My Friends,” died on Monday at his home in Crawford, Colo. He was 70.

The cause was lung cancer, his agent, Barrie Marshall, said.

Mr. Cocker had been a journeyman singer in Britain for much of the 1960s, building a reputation as a soulful barreler with full-throated versions of Ray Charles and Chuck Berry songs. But he became a sensation after his performance of “With a Little Help From My Friends” at the Woodstock music festival in 1969.

His appearance there, captured in the 1970 concert film “Woodstock,” established him as one of pop’s most powerful and irrepressible vocalists. With his tie-dyed shirt and shaggy mutton chops soaked in sweat, Mr. Cocker, then 25, pleadingly teased out the song’s verses — “What would you do if I sang out of tune?/Would you stand up and walk out on me?” — and threw himself into repeated climaxes, lunging and gesticulating in ways that seemed to imitate a guitarist in a heroic solo.

On Twitter, Ringo Starr wrote on Monday, “Goodbye and God bless to Joe Cocker from one of his friends.” In a statement, Paul McCartney recalled hearing Mr. Cocker’s record of the song. “It was just mind-blowing, totally turned the song into a soul anthem,” he said, “and I was forever grateful for him for having done that.”

After Woodstock, Mr. Cocker toured widely and took his place as perhaps the rock world’s most distinctive interpreter of others’ songs — an art then going out of fashion with the rise of folk-inspired singer-songwriters and groups, like the Beatles, that wrote their own material.

His other hits included a version of the Box Tops’ hit “The Letter” and the standard “Cry Me a River,” both in 1970, and “You Are So Beautiful,” in 1975. His only No. 1 single was “Up Where We Belong,” recorded as a duet with Jennifer Warnes for the 1982 film “An Officer and a Gentleman,” for which he won his only Grammy Award.

More Read

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/12/23/arts/music/joe-cocker-is-dead-at-70.html?_r=0