It’s important to recognize that the economic damage from obstruction and extortion didn’t start when the G.O.P. shut down the government. On the contrary, it has been an ongoing process, dating back to the Republican takeover of the House in 2010. And the damage is large: Unemployment in America would be far lower than it is if the House majority hadn’t done so much to undermine recovery.
Universal Pictures
Renee Zellweger in "Bridget Jones: The Edge of Reason"
This story first appeared in the Oct. 25 issue of The Hollywood Reporter magazine.
Bridget Jones isn't getting any younger. But there seems to be no sense of urgency to marry her off to a Hollywood suitor.
Film rights remain available to Helen Fielding's latest adventure, Bridget Jones: Mad About the Boy, the third literary outing for the self-deprecating heroine who counts calories and units of booze consumed with the fervor of a Nobel-winning chemist.
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Despite mammoth first-day sales Oct. 10 in the U.K. for the new book (46,000 copies) and two hit Bridget Jones films totaling $545 million at the worldwide box office, neither Universal Pictures nor London-based production outfit Working Title has struck a deal for the tome. It finds Bridget, now 51, a widowed mother of two after the death via land mine of Mark Darcy, played in the films by Colin Firth. Working Title produced 2001's Bridget Jones's Diary, which helped establish star Renee Zellweger at the top of the Hollywood food chain, as well as 2004's Bridget Jones: The Edge of Reason. Universal released the latter, which did nearly as much business worldwide as the first film.
"The book's imminent publication in many territories has taken up all of Helen Fielding's time, and no consideration has yet been given to the film rights of Bridget Jones: Mad About the Boy," Fielding's London-based agent Imogen Pelham tells THR of the novel that went on sale in the U.S. on Oct. 15.
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In the 11 years since Edge of Reason, Zellweger's star has faded. The last film she appeared in was 2010's My Own Love Song, which was not released in the U.S. Further complicating matters, Working Title and Universal are developing Bridget Jones's Baby, based on a Fielding original screenplay. That film, which would reunite Zellweger, 44, Firth, 53, and Hugh Grant, 53, was scheduled to shoot in 2012 with director Peter Cattaneo (The Full Monty) but abruptly was halted. At the time, Working Title's Tim Bevan told THR, "We are still working on the script, hence the delay to the start of production, but the film is going ahead as planned." Zellweger's reps say she still is attached to Baby, though Firth told the Chicago Sun-Times in April, "You might be seeing Bridget Jones' granddaughter's story being told by the time we get there."
Working Title could choose to ditch Baby and pursue a Boy movie with Zellweger or another actress -- if it secures rights. A source says Working Title "has an unwritten rule that they would get any Bridget Jones films. The Brits are different. They work as family, and Bridget is part of the family."
LAS VEGAS (AP) -- Las Vegas Sands Corp. beat Wall Street's expectations with its third-quarter results as record profits in Macau helped make up for continued weakness in Las Vegas.
The gambling giant's net income nearly doubled, driven by growth at Sands' five Macau properties. Macau is the only place in China where casino gambling is legal.
Sands' billionaire CEO Sheldon Adelson on Thursday cited the company's ability to develop "large, iconic projects" as the key to its growth. Sands was the first U.S. corporation to enter Macau, now the world's largest gambling market. The enclave issued a limited number of gambling licenses in the early 2000s, and some U.S. competitors were shut out.
"I couldn't be more confident about our continued success," Adelson told analysts during a conference call.
China Ltd., which runs Las Vegas Sands' Macau properties, now accounts for more than two-thirds of the company's revenue. Sands China's revenue rose 42.7 percent during the third quarter.
Adelson said he is watching Japan closely to see if it might become the next major market for Sands. He said the company could change major Japanese cities for the better.
"Our integrated resorts in the first 24 months increased tourism in Singapore by 41 percent. It's generally acknowledged we have changed Las Vegas with our business model and convention phase. We have changed Macau," he said. "Everybody in the government will acknowledge that. And we could easily change any other city in which we have a focused, paced business model."
Revenue remained sluggish at Sands' two Las Vegas casinos, the Venetian and Palazzo. Only restaurants and clubs showed significant growth, with food and beverage revenue rising 22 percent from last year. Casino revenue was down.
Sin City patrons are increasingly rejecting gambling in favor of high-end drinking and dining, forcing casino companies into an entertainment arms race. Sands' Las Vegas casinos host two of the 10 most profitable clubs in the U.S., according to the trade publication Nightclub & Bar.
The company reported net income of $626.7 million, or 76 cents per share, up from $349.8 million, or 42 cents per share. Revenue grew by 32 percent to $3.57 billion.
Adjusted earnings were 82 cents per share. Analysts polled by FactSet predicted adjusted earnings of 76 cents per share on revenue of $3.47 billion.
The company's stock rose 18 cents to $71.15 in aftermarket trading after a 2 percent rise during regular-session trading.
A clear majority of the U.S. Supreme Court sounded ready on Tuesday to uphold a Michigan referendum banning affirmative action in higher education. But the justices were less clear about whether they want to reverse a 40-year-old doctrine that bars changing the political process to disadvantage racial minorities.
The issue before the court was not whether affirmative action in higher education is permissible. So far, the justices have said it is. Indeed, one of the court's landmark cases upheld the affirmative action program at the University of Michigan Law School. But three years later, 58 percent of Michigan voters approved an initiative that amended the state constitution to ban such programs.
While the ban went into effect, it was challenged in court. Affirmative action supporters, contending that minority enrollment was plummeting, argued that the state constitutional amendment violated the federal Constitution by restructuring the political process along racial lines. Last year a federal appeals court agreed, and the state appealed to the Supreme Court.
Tuesday's arguments focused primarily on the "political process doctrine," which dates back more than 40 years. In two cases, the Supreme Court has held that the political structure cannot be altered to disadvantage minorities. In 1982, for instance, the justices ruled that it was unconstitutional for the state of Washington to amend its state constitution to prevent Seattle from using busing to voluntarily desegregate the city's public schools.
On Tuesday, Michigan Solicitor General John Bursch urged the Supreme Court to reverse the Seattle decision and others like it, if necessary. "Maybe the whole doctrine needs to be re-examined," he said, after a number of justices seemed unconvinced that there is a difference between the Seattle case and Michigan's.
Testing the state's argument, Justice Anthony Kennedy asked whether it would be permissible to pass a constitutional amendment requiring that all pro-affirmative action laws be approved by a supermajority in the state Legislature. Bursch replied that the court "might want to ... consider whether there's a discriminatory animus based on race," but that laws can't fall simply because they have a "racial focus."
The ACLU's Mark Rosenbaum defended the affirmative action programs as themselves democratically enacted by the governing boards, the regents, of the state's universities, who are elected by popular vote.
Chief Justice John Roberts asked whether there would be any problem "if the regents decided to revoke the affirmative action programs." That, answered Rosenbaum, would be "absolutely fine."
"So why is it different," Roberts inquired, when the "people of the state themselves make that decision?" The problem here, Rosenbaum said, is that the referendum changed the political process "from the ordinary" to "the extraordinary."
Justice Kennedy seemed dubious. "I just don't understand," he said, why the voters can't take away affirmative action but the regents or legislature can. Lawyer Rosenbaum responded that the people "have multiple options available to them" to change university policies. "The one option they don't have," he said, "is to treat racial matters different from all other matters."
Students seeking to enact or get rid of other preferences can lobby the regents, Rosenbaum observed. But racial minorities cannot lobby for reinstatement of consideration of race in college and university admissions decisions. Moreover, he said, to get back their preferences, minority students would have to embark on a difficult and multimillion-dollar campaign to re-amend the state constitution in a state that is more than three-quarters white.
Also arguing against the referendum was lawyer Shanta Driver. Justice Stephen Breyer posed this hypothetical to her: Most cities have "a vast number of administrators" of all kinds of programs. Suppose an administrator of one project decides to adopt a racial preference, for a good reason, but then the city council votes to abolish that preference. Would that be unlawful?
"No," replied Driver. Breyer pressed on, asking "Where's the line?" How do you avoid giving every individual administrator the power "to decide on his own whether to use racial preferences without a possibility of a higher-up veto?"
Justice Sonia Sotomayor stepped in with an answer. The line, she suggested, is "a very simple one. "The line is crossed when the political process is "changed specifically and only for race."
A decision in the case is expected by June.
Arunachalam Muruganantham installs his machine in a village in Chhattisgarh, India.
Arunachalam Muruganantham installs his machine in a village in Chhattisgarh, India.
Arunachalam Muruganantham had his light bulb moment when he was 29 years old, and holding a sanitary napkin for the first time.
Examining the cotton pads he was buying as a gift for his new wife, the Indian entrepreneur realized that the multinational company that produced them was probably spending cents on raw materials, and making a huge profit.
Women in Muruganantham's village in Tamil Nadu, including his wife, would often forego these expensive pads for rags they used repeatedly through their cycles. Even more uncomfortably, sometimes they utilized husks or leaves during menstruation.
The exorbitant cost of the foreign-made pads cut into their families' meal budget. Given a choice between fresh pads and fresh milk, they chose the latter.
A new movie, Menstrual Man, documents how, at great personal cost, Muruganantham created a cheap machine to address persistent menstrual hygiene challenges for rural women on the subcontinent. But, as director Amit Virmani points out, the product's traction may have more to do with social entrepreneurship than with health concerns.
Women whose self-help groups buy Muruganantham's machine can make more than a dollar a day — close to a global poverty line — selling the pads.
Sanitary napkins from global companies are in Indian stores for about $1.50 for an eight-pack. The ones from Murugantham's machine wholesale at about 25 cents for an eight-pack; the women's groups can sell them at whatever retail price they choose, retaining the profit. The cost of the machines ranges from about $1,200 to $6,000, depending on the features.
"The primary impulse when people are struggling to make a living is either, 'How can I make more money?,' or 'How can I save more money?'," Virmani said. "If you address those needs, your innovation stands a better chance to be adopted, to spread."
The machine, which Muruganantham began to research in 1998, has three stages of production. Inside a stainless steel container, a motor fluffs cellulose to prepare it as the core material for the napkins. Hand- and leg-operated tools are used to form the core of the napkin. A heat press is used to seal and apply the outer cover to the napkin. It's sterilized and packaged, and then ready to sell.
Muruganantham's invention was already spreading across India when Virmani found him last year, with 500 machines sold and an innovation award from India's president under the entrepreneur's belt. But getting there had been all uphill.
Once Muruganantham had prototyped the machine, he needed testers. But his wife and other family members refused, as did girls at the nearby medical college. So Muru, as Virmani calls him, decided to become a tester himself.
He filled bottles with animal blood and attached tubes that would press the blood into his drawers as he biked and walked around town. His rural village shunned him, viewing this with suspicion. And his wife's suspicions — that he was chasing medical college girls around town for something other than product testing — ended his marriage.
Still, for six years, Muruganantham pressed on (yup, pressed) — and now more than 1,000 of his machines have been sold in India. There's also been global interest in replicating the model, from Afghanistan to Rwanda.
Virmani said he attributes Muruganantham's success to the inventor's understanding of his core audience, starting with the rudimentary nature of the machine. "It's wooden, and it's got pedals where he could have had motors," Virmani said.
"He knows how to motorize the damn things, but the more complicated you make the machines, at some point they'll break down," Virmani said. "The way he's engineered it, it's pretty much something that (the rural women) can repair themselves, and they don't have to keep paying for servicing."
Muruganantham says he wants to see India become a "100 percent sanitary napkin country" in his lifetime.
As for Menstrual Man, it's on the festival circuit, and will be available on iTunes in January.
Britney Spears, who spent a couple of days in London this week doing promo for her new album Britney Jean and her upcoming Las Vegas residency Piece of Me, is already back home in the US but last night she appeared on British TV in an interview she taped with Alan Carr on his brilliant talk show Chatty Man. For the most part, Britney was cute and endearing in the interview with only a few places where she got a bit awkward … but hey, it’s been a long time since she’s made herself available for these kinds of interviews so I can forgive her for being a bit rusty. Chatty Man is such a great show, I wish we were able to watch it here in the US (and NO, I’m not interested in an American version of the show … I want Austin Powers Alan Carr or nothing at all). Click the embed above to watch part 1 of Britney‘s interview with Alan on Chatty Man then click below to watch the rest of the interview segments.
