Trouble in the back seat (video)

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The Grand Budapest Hotel (trailer)

Film Synopsis: As the owner of a once-luxurious Alpine hotel relates its history to a visiting writer, he describes his youth as a lobby boy at the Grand Budapest, where he was the protégé of the hotel's concierge, Monsieur Gustave. Gustave runs the five-star establishment with panache and an iron fist, while also offering his services as a lover to the older, wealthy women guests.

Director: Wes Anderson

Cast includes: Ralph Fiennes, Tony Revolori, Saoirse Ronan, Bill Murray, Jude Law, Edward Norton, Owen Wilson, Willem Dafoe, Adrien Brody, Tilda Swinton, Jeff Goldblum, Harvey Keitel, Jason Schwartzman





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Whiplash - Dragging or rushing?

Film Synopsis:  Andrew is a 19-year-old music conservatory student who is determined to become a great jazz drummer. His talent and fierce passion draw the attention of the school's most intimidating teacher, Terence Fletcher, who believes that students excel not through praise and encouragement, but through relentless humiliation and fear.

Director: Damien Chazelle

Cast includes: Miles Teller, JK Simmons, Melissa Benoist

Fact: Like his character in the film, Miles Teller actually played the drums until his hands bled.





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The Oscars

The 87th Academy Awards ceremony will take place on February 22, 2015, at the Dolby Theater in Hollywood, Los Angeles.

Actor Neil Patrick Harris will host the ceremony for the first time.

The nominees for the 87th Academy Awards were announced on January 15 at 

the Samuel Goldwyn Theater in Beverly Hills, California.  

Birdman and The Grand Budapest Hotel tied for the most nominations with nine each.

Singapore smoker fined $15,000

Singapore's National Environment Agency has fined a smoker $15,000 for throwing cigarette butts out of his apartment window. Officials did not disclose which floor the smoker lived on.

The Agency fined the man $600 per cigarette for the first 33 offences, and ordered him to do community service for the 34th, all committed within four days.

The 38-year-old smoker, who was caught on surveillance camera, will have to clean a public area for five hours wearing a bright vest bearing the words "Corrective Work Order".

Singapore, famous for its cleanliness, cracks down hard on even minor crimes like eating and drinking on the street, littering and vandalism, which is punishable by caning.

In 2013 the National Environment Agency deployed surveillance cameras at nearly 600 locations. Last year it took 206 enforcement actions against offenders for high-rise littering.

Singapore is known for its strict laws governing cleanliness, order, and social behavior.

One of the country's forms of punishment is caning, which is not only legal but mandatory for vandalism offenses such as displaying banners, pamphlets, or flags on public property, and writing on public property. Penalties can include fines of up to $2,000, up to 8 strokes of the cane, and prison.

Contrary to popular belief, the act of chewing gum is allowed in Singapore. But the sale, import, and manufacture of gum is banned. Smuggling gum into the country can rack up fines of up to $8,000 dollars, along with one year of jail time.

Police can compel both residents and non-residents to random drug tests. Drugs ingested even before entering the country can land a person in prison. The death penalty is mandatory for some narcotics offenses.

Spitting and jaywalking are also illegal and can lead to arrest.

However, punishment isn’t the only route Singapore has taken to get to where it is today. In 2013 the government launched an initiative called “Spot the Conscientious Motorist”. Following its guidelines, traffic cops reward drivers with gas vouchers for their good driving habits.

Edited from Reuters

The story of ISIS (video)

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Boxing ban

       FIRST Sweden in 2007, then Cuba in 2013, and now Norway have left the small club of countries that ban professional boxing. The centre-right coalition in power since 2013 promised to cut taxes and red tape—and to let Norwegians indulge in pastimes its predecessors deemed too dangerous, including cheaper wine and spirits, jetskis and Segways.
       And last month 33 years without pro boxing came to an end, leaving Iceland with the Nordic region’s sole boxing ban.
      Health concerns lay behind the Norwegian ban. (Cuba had considered the violence—and prize money—incompatible with Marxism.) The World Medical Association has long called for the sport to be outlawed everywhere. But Norway’s boxers are delighted, as they can fight at home and earnings will rise.
       Undefeated in her 27 pro matches to date, in September Cecilia Braekhus (picture) became the first Norwegian, and first woman, to hold all major world-title championships in her class (welterweight). In 2012 she was named Norway’s sports personality of the year. A favorite of the country’s sports pages and tabloid press, she freshened up boxing’s battered image—and made it a symbol of the fightback against the Nordic nanny state.


edited from The Economist

Smithsonian Museum first digital collection (video)

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Facebook Launches Free Internet in Colombia

On Wednesday Facebook Inc launched a mobile phone application that will give Colombian users free access to a handful of online services. Facebook hopes the Internet.org project – a charitable, non-profit initiative - will help more than 4 billion Internet-less people worldwide, many of whom live in developing countries. Africa and India. Colombia is the first nation in Latin America to receive the new Internet.org service, in partnership with local mobile phone provider Tigo, but the aim is to push the application across the region. Facebook Inc will offer tools that will allow Colombians  to “build their own prosperity”, Chief Executive Officer Mark Zuckerberg said at a presentation in Bogota. “By giving people these basic tools for free, you're creating an equal playing field,” Zuckerberg said, referring to entrepreneurs who will be able to use the free Internet to start or grow a business. Internet.org will offer free access to  more than a dozen services via the Android operating system, including online encyclopedia Wikipedia, weather websites, job listings and health information, as well as Facebook's own social network and messaging service. But users will have to pay data charges when using links that lead to information on other websites. Facebook Inc first launched the service in Zambia back in July 2014.. This is the first time the company will offer services beyond its own website. The initiative will potentially boost the size of Facebook's audience, which totals 1.32 billion monthly users. Tigo, a unit of Millicom, has about 8 million users in Colombia. For operators, the business case for giving away free Internet access is less clear, although some operators believe a free taste of the web will persuade new customers to pay for additional online services.

edited from Newsroom and VOA

Building safety in Kenya (video)

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911 and Facebook

Ryan Pritchard, 41, was hiking Sunday afternoon with his sons Jake, 11, and Devon, 18, in the near Lake Barryessa, about 30 miles east of his Sacramento home, when he slipped on a loose rock and fell 150 feet down a cliff and landed in a tree.

Devon went to their car to get help and little brother Jake went down the cliff, got his father’s cell phone and called 911, reaching the California Highway Patrol dispatcher. But the call was disconnected before he could give an accurate location and efforts to call again failed.

Solano County Sheriff’s Department dispatchers took the information and began to work together to try to determine where the subject was.

The cell phone coordinates got them no closer than a cell tower in the city of Vacaville, some 30 miles from where the hikers were. Then a dispatch trainee, Breanna Martinez, got an idea.

She googled the guy’s name. Google took Martinez to Ryan Pritchard’s LinkedIn page, which then led her to his Facebook page.

“I scrolled down and the very first post was a picture of his two sons and behind him was the lake — Lake Berryessa,” Martinez told CBS Sacramento. “And it just said, ‘Hiking the Blue Ridge Trail today.’”

That was all the information the dispatchers needed. A CHP rescue helicopter crew found the trail, plucked Ryan from the tree and got him to UC Davis Medical Center all before darkness.

Ryan is being treated for several fractured bones, a head injury and a broken jaw, his family told CBS Sacramento.

“I am really impressed by this. I’m so proud of them, taking the initiative and solving the problem,” said the dispatchers’ boss, Solano County Sheriff Tom Ferrara. “And if you have to come up with a new way of doing it, that’s just outstanding.”

 edited from Business Insider