রবিবার, ৩০ সেপ্টেম্বর, ২০১২

Monsters party tops box office with "Hotel Transylvania"

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - Family film "Hotel Transylvania" brought new life to movie box offices with a chart-topping $43 million in U.S. and Canadian ticket sales during the weekend, a record for a September opening.

The animated 3-D movie featuring the voices of Adam Sandler and Selena Gomez finished ahead of new science fiction film "Looper," which took in $21.2 million from Friday through Sunday.

The police drama "End of Watch," which tied with "House at the End of the Street" for the top spot last week, landed in third place with $8 million, according to studio estimates.

The big turnout for the top films helped revive a box office that has struggled through several weeks of sluggish attendance.

In "Hotel Transylvania," Frankenstein, the Invisible Man and other monsters gather for a party at a high-end resort operated by Dracula. Their celebration is disrupted when a boy discovers the hotel and falls in love with Dracula's daughter but must deal her overprotective father.

The film's domestic sales far exceeded distributor Sony Corp's prediction for $25 million-plus from the North American (U.S. and Canadian) market. The movie added $8.1 million from international markets, for a global debut of $51.1 million.

"It's absolutely an incredible result," said Rory Bruer, president of worldwide distribution for Sony Corp's Sony Pictures studio, adding that the studio had hoped for something in the $30 million range, which he noted "in this market would have been extraordinary."

The hefty take easily beat the September opening record of $35.65 million for "Sweet Home Alabama," which had stood for 10 years.

"Hotel Transylvania" cost $85 million to produce.

"LOOPER"

Sony also distributed second-place film "Looper," a time travel story about a man charged with killing an older version of himself. The movie starring Bruce Willis, Joseph Gordon-Levitt and Emily Blunt earned rave reviews from critics with a 93 percent positive rating on the Rotten Tomatoes website.

Sony had predicted ticket sales of up to $20 million domestically for "Looper." Endgame Entertainment paid for the film's production.

"To see it open as it did bodes well for how well this movie will play in the future," said Bruer.

Looper, a Chinese co-production, performed especially well in China, where the take was on par with, and could exceed, even the U.S. total, Endgame's chief executive James Stern said.

"We don't have the final box office tally" due to a national holiday in China, but the numbers are pointing toward "the very first time in history that China would be world's leading market for an international film," said Stern.

The weekend's other new movie, "Won't Back Down," stars Viola Davis and Maggie Gyllenhaal as two determined mothers who try to transform their children's failing inner city school. The film started off with $2.7 million over the weekend, in 10th place.

Rounding out the top five, Clint Eastwood baseball film "Trouble with the Curve" scored $7.5 million to take the No. 4 slot, while horror flick "House at the End of the Street" earned $7.2 million during its second weekend in theaters.

New comedy "Pitch Perfect," about a girls' singing group, pulled in an impressive $5.2 million in a limited debut on 335 screens for the sixth spot. Distributor Universal Studios chose a smaller opening in hopes of generating buzz ahead of a wider release on October 5.

Sony Corp's movie studio released "Hotel Transylvania" and "Looper." "Won't Back Down" was distributed by News Corp's 20th Century Fox studio and produced by Walden Media.

"End of Watch" was released by Open Road Films, a joint venture between owners Regal Entertainment Group and AMC Entertainment Inc. Time Warner Inc's Warner Bros. distributed "Trouble With the Curve."

Comcast Corp's Universal Studios released "Pitch Perfect." "Trouble with the Curve" was distributed by Time Warner Inc's Warner Bros. unit.

(Additional reporting by Chris Michaud)

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/monsters-rule-box-office-hotel-transylvania-160632797--sector.html

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PST: Arlo White dishes on MLS stadiums

TOPIC:?MLS stadiums

Arlo White and the rest of the NBC Sports Network crew are at BC Place for tonight?s big Cascadia Cup showdown, as Seattle visits Vancouver.?(9 p.m. ET)

Recently remodeled BC Place is one of 14 facilities built or remodeled specifically for Major League Soccer. Nothing has driven MLS growth more than the ongoing facility initiative. So we asked White three quick questions about MLS stadia.

There really are some terrific grounds now for MLS watching. Which are your personal favorites?

I worked in Seattle for two years and will forever have a soft spot for the mind- blowing experience that is CenturyLink Field on game-day. But if that is the equivalent to baseball of the ?new Yankee Stadium,? then down I-5 is Jeld-Wen Field, which would be the ?Fenway Park,? with a wonderful, raucous, historic element to it on match day.

I would go with the new soccer specific stadiums, though. I think Houston have done a tremendous job downtown. Kansas City ? which I somehow haven?t been to yet, which is a shame ? is of course a tremendous stadium.

But for me, I?ve always loved Red Bull Arena. When I toyed with the idea of coming over to work in Major League Soccer a few things tipped the balance. One of those elements was the construction of Red Bull Arena. I thought, nobody is going to spend $250 million on a stadium if they don?t really mean it, and if they aren?t serious about soccer being a success in New York, in New Jersey, and the United States.

It?s the prototype MLS arena for me. It?s 25,000, it is done to the highest specifications. And when it is full it creates terrific atmosphere. They just need to fill it more regularly. For me, that is the flagship soccer specific stadium in Major League Soccer.

Our stadiums here are modeled on European grounds. But we do stadiums pretty well here, too. Is there anything at all that European grounds could learn from the newly developed North American soccer facilities?

It has been huge era, a decade or maybe 15 years, of building new stadiums and modernizing the arenas in Europe leagues. I can speak more of the English leagues than anywhere else and there are some massively impressive new stadiums. Most of them are fairly identical, but they do the job.

The MLS stadiums, I?d like to see a little more personality maybe, but I know there are economic reasons a lot of them look fairly similar.

In terms of Europe and learning things from MLS, I think in MLS the have built the stadiums they require, but they certainly do the job. I wouldn?t say they are better or worse than anything in Europe.

A pair of prominent markets on the East Coast, D.C. United and New England, are in dire need of new grounds. Is there any reason to believe new facilities for New England and D.C. United cannot breathe fresh life into those organizations, a la Sporting Kansas City and the amazing franchise revitalization we?ve seen there?

I have absolutely no doubt that it would. I went to CommunityAmerica Ballpark [outside Kansas City, where the club played for three years] a couple of times and announced games out of a metal container. It was an interesting experience! ? There was enthusiasm there, but there wasn?t the passion or the raucous atmosphere we see we see at Livestrong, which is such a terrific stadium.

D.C. have passionate fans and I see it at RFK stadium every time I go there. I just don?t see it in the huge numbers that were once there.

There is a huge passion for soccer around the Boston area and in New England. But they have to go out to Gillette Stadium, which is painful to get to. And the crowds aren?t anywhere near as big as they should be.

So if those two clubs, with those two passionate fan bases with their potential fan bases, get gleaming new homes which are accessible to the majority to the fans, I think you are going to see a tremendous upturn in atmosphere and interest in soccer in those markets.

Source: http://prosoccertalk.nbcsports.com/2012/09/29/three-good-questions-for-nbc-soccer-voice-arlo-white/related

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Page Not Found - Yahoo!

Please check the URL for proper spelling and capitalization. If you're having trouble locating a destination on Yahoo!, try visiting the Yahoo! homepage or look through a list of Yahoo!'s online services.

Please try Yahoo Help Central if you need more assistance.

Source: http://rss.news.yahoo.com/rss/weightloss

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Tornado hits fair in Spain, flood deaths reach 10

BARCELONA, Spain (AP) ? A tornado swept through a fair ground in a Spanish town, knocking down a Ferris wheel and injuring 35 people, while the death toll from flooding in the same southern region of the country rose to 10, authorities said Saturday.

The Friday tornado damaged several rides and cut electricity in the temporary fair set up in the main square of Gandia, according to its town hall website. It said 15 of the injured were seriously hurt, all of whom were treated on site.

Local media reported the fair in Valencia province was closed to the public at the time of a thunderstorm and that all the injured were fair workers.

Just inland from the Mediterranean coastal town, five more victims of Friday's flash floods southwest of Gandia were found overnight. They included a middle-aged woman in the town of Lorca.

Last summer Lorca was hit by Spain's deadliest earthquakes in more than 50 years, leaving nine dead.

A spokeswoman for the regional government of Andalucia told The Associated Press on Saturday that the heavy downpours and resulting high waters had claimed the lives of five people in the province of Murcia, three in Almeria and two in Malaga.

The spokesman, speaking on condition of anonymity in keeping with government policy, said that a 52-year-old British woman was missing in Almeria as well as one homeless man. Five people originally declared missing had been found alive.

Local media reported that hundreds of citizens had to be evacuated throughout the region.

The flooding disrupted high-speed train service between Madrid and Valencia and various regional lines, while bridges and roads were also made impassible.

The heavy rains which started on Friday morning are expected to continue throughout Saturday, with the front moving north toward Catalonia and the Balearic Islands.

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/tornado-hits-fair-spain-flood-deaths-reach-10-144042955.html

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US officials explain Libya attack intelligence

WASHINGTON (AP) ? U.S. intelligence officials sought to explain Friday why the Obama administration's understanding of the Sept. 11 attack on the U.S. Consulate in Benghazi is "evolving."

Facing a barrage of Republican criticism about what the administration knew and when about the attack, the Office of the Director of National Intelligence issued a statement Friday that laid out how officials came to understand the assault that killed U.S. Ambassador Chris Stevens and three other Americans. At the same time, the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations issued a statement explaining her early descriptions of the attack.

In the days immediately after the attack, the administration said it believed it was a spontaneous reaction to an anti-Islamic video that ridiculed Islam's Prophet Muhammad and ignited mob protests on U.S. embassies around the Middle East and in North Africa. Now, the administration has begun to call it a terrorist attack carried out by al-Qaida-linked militants and explain that it was a planned attack distinct from the mob protests in the region.

Republicans have seized on the Obama administration's changing narrative, saying the administration was too slow to label it a terrorist attack because, they said, the White House did not want to admit its policies had failed to defeat al-Qaida, and quell anti-American sentiment in the Muslim world.

"Throughout our investigation we continued to emphasize that information gathered was preliminary and evolving," DNI spokesman Shawn Turner's statement said.

"It remains unclear if any group or person exercised overall command and control of the attack, and if extremist group leaders directed their members to participate. However, we do assess that some of those involved were linked to groups affiliated with, or sympathetic to al-Qaida," he said.

At the same time, a spokeswoman for U.N. Ambassador Susan Rice also sought to explain comments that Rice made early in the investigation saying there was no evidence the Benghazi attack was premeditated.

"During her appearances on the Sunday talk shows Sept. 16, 2012, Ambassador Rice's comments were prefaced at every turn with a clear statement that an FBI investigation was under way that would provide the definitive accounting of the events that took place in Benghazi," said Erin Pelton, spokeswoman for the U.S. Mission to the United Nations. "At every turn Ambassador Rice provided ? and said she was providing ? the best information and the best assessment that the administration had at the time, based on what was provided to Ambassador Rice and other senior U.S. officials by the U.S. intelligence community."

Further intelligence may be slow to arrive. The FBI team that arrived in Libya last week to investigate the incident can't get to the scene of the attack because it is too dangerous, according to two law enforcement officials. The officials requested anonymity because they are not authorized to speak publicly about an ongoing investigation.

Republicans have seen the Libya attack as an opportunity to attack President Barack Obama on one of his strengths, foreign policy.

Rep. Peter King, the New York Republican who chairs the House Homeland Security Committee, said on CNN that Rice's explanation on the talk shows was "such a failure of foreign policy message and leadership" and "such a misstatement of facts" that "I believe she should resign."

In response, Sen. John Kerry, D-Mass., chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, said in a statement he was "deeply disturbed by efforts to find the politics instead of finding the facts in this debate." He called Rice "an enormously capable person."

GOP presidential nominee Mitt Romney accused the administration of being dishonest.

"I think it's pretty clear that they haven't wanted to level with the American people. We expect candor from the president and transparency," Romney told Fox News this week.

Recent intelligence reports indicated a force of more than 50 heavily armed extremists attacked the consulate, using gun trucks for added firepower, and establishing a perimeter to limit access to the compound and catch any Americans who might try to escape. A first wave of attacks set fire to the main building, forcing the Americans to flee to a fallback building a half mile away, where a second group of extremists attacked with mortar fire. Stevens died of apparent smoke inhalation when he was caught inside the main consulate building, becoming separated from the other fleeing diplomats.

Intelligence officials have focused their attention on Ansar al-Shariah, a Libyan militant group led by a former detainee at the U.S. military-run prison in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.

Gen. Martin Dempsey, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said Thursday that there has been a "thread of intelligence reporting" about groups in eastern Libya trying to coalesce but no specific threat to the consulate.

___

Associated Press writers Matthew Lee and Pete Yost contributed to this report from Washington.

___

Follow Dozier on Twitter at http://twitter.com/KimberlyDozier

.

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/us-officials-explain-libya-attack-intelligence-203446766.html

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CORRECTED-UPDATE 5-Spain debt rises on aid to banks, regions, finance cost


Sun Sep 30, 2012 10:33am BST

(Corrects to note that Brussels has declined to comment on the draft budget)

* Spain details cuts to health, education

* Debt-to-GDP ratio to rise to 90.5 percent by end-2013

* Budget deficit rises to 7.4 percent including bank aid

* Gross debt issuance rises to 207.2 billion euros in 2013

By Andr?s Gonz?lez

MADRID, Sept 29 (Reuters) - Spain's debt levels are set to rise next year, piling pressure on the government to apply for aid as it pours funds in to cash-strapped regions, an ailing banking system and rising refinancing costs, its budget showed on Saturday.

Spain's debt as a ratio of gross domestic product will reach 90.5 percent by end 2013, according to the document presented to parliament for approval, almost three times that registered before the property bubble burst in 2008.

The budget aims to make savings of around 13 billion euros ($16.7 billion) next year, largely by deepening already unpopular cuts in public sector wages, education, health and social services, fuelling anti-austerity protests.

"This is an austerity budget, but will serve to help us get over this long economic crisis and once again show that Spain is a trustworthy partner within Europe," Treasury Minister Cristobal Montoro told journalists after delivering the budget.

Spain is at the centre of the euro zone debt crisis as nervous investors demand ever higher premiums to hold Spanish debt on concerns that the government cannot control its finances in the midst of a deepening recession.

Calls by wealthy northeastern region Catalonia for independence and the rising number of demonstrations on the streets of major cities have stoked doubts that Spain can fix its problems without help.

Thousands of protesters gathered on Saturday in Madrid's Neptune plaza, between the Prado Museum and Parliament, for a third time this week to vent anger at politicians they accuse of pillaging the welfare state to bail out badly-run banks.

"This has to change. We have to show them we are not an anti-system minority but represent Spain's discontent and we are many. You only have to see the unemployment rate to see that," said state school teacher, Montse, 44, who was at the march with her unemployed husband and 11-year-old daughter.

Unemployment in Spain is more than double the European Union average, with half of all working-age under-26s unable to find jobs and shattered businesses laying off employees they cannot afford to pay.

Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy has delayed any plea for aid, which would kick-start a European Central Bank plan to buy debt and ease financing costs, though this week has passed reforms and the budget plan in what many see is an effort to pre-empt the likely terms of a bailout.

Rajoy, who said he is considering the conditions behind any aid request, is widely expected to wait until after regional elections in Galicia and the Basque Country before taking any decision.

RISING BORROWING NEEDS

The budget details spending cuts of 3.1 percent in health, 14.4 percent in education and 6.3 percent in unemployment benefits, as the recession, which began in the first quarter, drags on.

Spain will also slash state funding to commerce, tourism and small and medium-sized companies by 18.8 percent and infrastructure by 13.5 percent.

The government will increase its reliance on international markets for funding next year, with gross debt issuance requirements of 207.2 billion euros, after budgeting in 2012 for gross issuance of 186.1 billion euros.

The cost of financing its debt, as benchmark 10-year bond yields rise to near unsustainable levels of above 6 percent, is expected to increase to 38.6 billion euros, or 3.6 percent of GDP, in 2013, the budget showed.

The Treasury must pay debt redemptions of 159.2 billion euros in 2013, up slightly from 153.2 billion euros in 2012.

The increase in the debt-to-GDP ratio was due to the economic crisis and the effect of state instruments on public accounts, the Treasury said in the document.

The instruments include the power deficit bond programme, FADE, the service provider fund for regional governments, Spain's part in aid granted to Ireland, Greece and Portugal and the recapitalisation loan for the country's banks, it said.

Brussels on Thursday said that Spain's detailed timetable for economic reforms goes beyond what the European Commission has asked of Spain and is an ambitious step forward, though it has declined to comment on the draft budget at this stage.

Many economists expressed doubt that Spain's conservatives would be able to raise the cash the budget demanded as pension and debt-servicing costs rise.

"My general view is that this is an optimistic budget, in the sense that predictions for the contraction in 2013 are very optimistic," said Xavier Vives, economist at business school IESE, adding that he expected the plans to be revised, as with every other budget over the past four years.

The budget is based on the assumption that GDP will shrink by 0.5 percent in 2013 year-on-year, though most economists expect a deeper slump.

DEFICIT JUMP

Spain will meet its 2012 public deficit target as dictated by European guidelines, Montoro said, but the shortfall will jump by more than one percentage point if aid to its struggling banks were taken in to account.

The Spanish deficit this year would be 6.3 percent of GDP, not including these payments to its banks, he said, but would rise to 9.4 percent of GDP last year and 7.4 percent of GDP this year if the aid was considered.

"Everything within the deficit derived from financial operations aren't included ... they're considered one-offs," Montoro said.

Spain has asked for up to 100 billion euros for its crisis-hit banks, though the debate among Spain's European partners rages over whether that money would go directly to its lenders or first via public coffers.

On Friday, an independent report showed that Spanish banks will need up to 59.3 billion euros in extra capital to ride out the economic downturn.

The budget details on Saturday showed Spain's debt ratio included 30 billion euros of the planned 100-billion-euro aid request for the country's banks.

($1 = 0.7773 euros) (Additional reporting Carlos Ruano, Nigel Davies and Paul Day; Writing by Paul Day; Editing by James Jukwey and David Goodman)

Source: http://uk.reuters.com/article/2012/09/30/spain-budget-idUKL5E8KT0NM20120930?feedType=RSS&feedName=rbssFinancialServicesAndRealEstateNews

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