The Continue Film Maestro

John Williams, Belstaff composer of your iconic film standing to get "Indiana Jones, inch "Jaws, inch "Star Wars" as well as "Superman" features not one but two latest video clips, either aimed by simply Steven Spielberg, initial this particular thirty day period. Although the business enterprise of creating show rankings comes with commenced to switch drastically all around your ex. Steve Jurgensen features exactly The afternoon meal Destroy.

On a sprawling Common Companies bunch, Canada Goose Jacka from the bungalow exactly where Bob Williams written typically the favorite songs just for "Saving Individual Thomas, inch "Schindler's List" along with some "Star Wars" pictures, a composer's workplace can be carpeted, noiseless, along with with out using laptop and / or woven screens about any sort. He or she performs in the compact penning workdesk, crafting notation within pen for provided pieces of paper, with a easy chair rotate of the Steinway remarkable.

'Memoirs on the Geisha' (which Mr. Spielberg had been a new designer)

In your partner's home office a couple weeks ago, Canada Goose Jakke your composer had an opportunity in the bed linens in conventional paper splayed over his / her workspace, a style tunes so that you can NBC's "Meet typically the Squeeze. inch It's just a Williams structure this he's got become rented for you to freshen, and the "Today" opener, which will NBC states will certainly debut January. 06. Your dog used a new dark colored turtleneck material, smokey barbecue grilling pants along with dark colored shoes or boots. The facial beard was basically precisely the same less sunlit areas about bright it has been regarding several ages. To the cappuccino platform there is an important booklet involving Robert Frost's poems and also a DVD described together with songs because of "Sunset Boulevard, inch "Titanic" as well as "Sabrina, inch fodder for the purpose of among the list of live life services involving motion picture new music he performs with the Artist Serving and / or Tanglewood within Boston, when he is been recently your longtime appearance.

Though self-effacing ("It isn't actually a attitude that they are specially happy with just what When i do") your composer generally seems to understand the older because debatably a common experiencing the silver screen composer along with each of those ancient experience and even designate realization involving regular moviegoers. Along at the current ask with conductor Brandon Levine, Moncler Jacket Mr. Williams has written an article designed for destroy harp to become executed simply by Ann Hobson Preliminary for the situation regarding your ex golden age with the Birkenstock boston Symphony.

And he has gone focused on your factor flicks may well have fun on having a movies he / she likes to many. "Today now we have amazing fine art movies staying built through right, inches Mr. Williams proclaimed, gesturing through one particular palm, "and throughout below put movies that is certainly huge plus spreads throughout all sorts of things. There is certainly an incredible move involving these universes, incase we'd like a fabulous structure that will mysteriously get in touch the software, the idea looks like a lot more flick popular music which can be working with a glue, an important binder, concerning the vernacular plus the audio about art work. "

Corrections Amplifications
Music publisher Ramiro Belgardt along David Williams. A younger model on this page inaccurately gifted her surname like Belgradt.

Pining to have an IMF Alternative, European countries Wants for you to Feast Cash

European management still check longingly towards Foreign Finance Pay for to help you take care of his or her situation, Belstaff not just for the money still just as one enforcer with troublesome circumstances that they are enforced in delinquent euro-zone governing bodies.

At their own smt throughout Brussels Ending friday, Moncler Piumini all the leads from Eu governing bodies agreedfor the very first time within this crisisthat their particular governing bodies would likely mail the actual IMF about 180 thousand ($267 million) to help reinforce any fund's sources, most likely by country wide fundamental loan companies around The world.

The authorities trust your many advantages should lure profit via other folks, Moncler Jacket as well as appearing sells for example China and tiawan plus Brazilian, which have provided to enable overcome a euro-zone crisisbut basically over the IMF.

The proceed, though witnessed by way of various locations out in the open The european countries like a encouraging motion, Canada Jakker is not a major phase for spanning a foundation market place concerns with regards to The european countries.

One of these dreads is normally that your big euro-zone economic crisis would have difficulties asking for, nevertheless often be too large a great IMF test application. A new larger bailout create funding for should be asked to help allay who fret, however the understanding Ending friday could quite possibly assure businesses which the IMF could enjoy a new promoting position.

"These strategies is going to improve the IMF's limit to satisfy their systemic obligations meant for their world-wide membership--which is very critical provided typically the recurring monetary slowdown in addition to economical promote stress, inch IMF Coping with Movie director Christine Lagarde reported Tuesday.

The Euro authorities prefer to set up data within the next 10 days and nights for any money, which may always be split using their company 440 billion dollars taxpayer-backed bailout create funding for, the actual American Fiscal Firmness Unit. Pertaining to three-fourths from the cutting edge capital about to typically the IMF would likely are derived from the particular 18 international locations that will reveal typically the dollar forex, using the majority on the other sorts of 10 Eu locations.

The management currently have necessary the cash would probably originated from domestic core financial institutions throughout The european countries, not really this Eu Fundamental Mortgage lender. Within an significant cutting-edge, Germany's Bundesbankone on the core lenders a large number of tolerant towards bailing out and about the Eu neighborssigned to the prepare.

But it's not devoid of hot debate. ECB Us president Mario Draghi in This plonked freezing the water about the notion, thinking it truly is banned to the ECB and / or country wide key finance institutions for you to loan cash to your IMF with regards to investing in governing administration provides, indication the fact that IMF would need to obtain another sort of usage your money can buy. Numerous American representatives currently have advocated which the ECB need to provide substantial amounts involving cash on the IMF, that could in return loan so that you can indigenous authorities, in order to prevent a new treaty this discourages a ECB because of loans authorities cutbacks.

The IMF, which in turn behaves being an sudden mortgage lender to its 187 affiliate international locations, looks its limitations plus intrinsic arguments. Quite a few IMF membersincluding the largest, the actual You. Utes. are actually unlikely to get a lot more in the fund's income in jeopardy on the plagued pound area until such time as Europeans insert a lot more of their total taxpayers' dollars at risk.

One IMF-directed methodology which may confirm a lot more strong for you to base the actual crunch can be whenever Western places given capitalfunds that is going to in all likelihood have to be accepted as a result of politics authoritiesinto or perhaps a taken credit account along at the IMF.

European authorities layed out this kind of tactic recently, potentially making use of finances on the euro-zone bailout pay for, this EFSF. Of which revenue, within the consideration governed by way of the IMF, could acquire financial obligations with no threat into the different IMF paid members.

The help that will Western america's: Your IMF would likely represent a private enforcer in addition to firmly demand which will persons consent to modernize ones own outlays plus match described spots in the form of circumstance involving experiencing financial resources.

While that you will find seen as an great advance, those people talks haven't much gone on with the enduring disinclination with Western european areas that can put extra of these taxpayers' dollars for drinking and driving.

Still, all the IMF is for certain to generally be associated with just about any supreme alternative, at the very least that will put in force all the terminology involving almost any Euro bailouts. It truly is previously going through that will during the rescues involving A holiday in greece, Ireland in europe together with Spain. Any IMF provides perpetrated in excess of $100 million for you to these lands.

IMF officers can also be essential people for planning to assemble a remedy to uncertainty, and so even more nations around the world don't have to have bailouts, for the reason that international country's economy hangs during the harmony. Including You. Ohydrates. officers, IMF commanders get involved yourself with a form of taxi diplomacy lately on wanting to mediate variation amongst euro-zone areas.

Ms. Lagarde, exactly who procured the particular IMF helm go on summertime, in addition to your girlfriend deputy, ex- Bright white Residence accepted Brian Lipton, generally attend essential options within the euro-zone get togethers and even summits with the Couple of 20 top rated establishments.

The IMF purposes funds forked out by simply their participant america's to invest in enable software. The software performs standard economical feedback off the nation's subscribers and features a strong military services in economists plus money industry experts offered to watch person international locations and even engage in likely methods.

Governments normally like transmitting the finances from the IMF with the fund's qualifications and even integrity. It offers do not missing income at a personal loan with a hurting world, partly since the device is normally the most important with tier to get reimbursed. And also as their new member places really are within the hook punch for all IMF software, the particular fund's fiscal loans is usually stricter even more powerful when compared with specials approximately man or woman areas.

The IMF "has a big advantages from a situation predicament as it relishes awesome faith and even self-belief, inch Western european Key Mortgage lender regulating local authority or council participant Erkki Liikanen assured Finnish court broadcaster MTV3. "It has working experience together with conditional higher education, together with almost all these sort of non permanent loans need to be conditional. "

European authorities experience invoked your IMF throughout every one of the several G-20 get togethers for the reason that the summer season. Typically, in which reproduced his or her incapability to generate a new tougher bailout cash designed for incorporating a discord. Many euro-zone administrators furthermore presume your IMF, featuring a world reliability and additionally outsider reputation, may very well be more advantageous compared to the Europeans his or her self in developing some sort of bailout arrange and even accomplishing it has the provisions.

But all the IMF would require alot more moneymany days that $390 thousand on the nation's present-day readily available resourcesto use a genuine likelihood for using primary finance place in a very saving of an big current economic climate like Toscana. Italy's come together produces experience surged recently while people skepticism the country's funding trail. In the event Tuscany have been to make sure you do IMF financial products, that will desire out additional private-sector people in addition to trigger that German administration to help you count on bailouts. The region must need no less than more than 200 million future month to help you loan it has the state.

U. Ohydrates. authorities take care of which the accountability pertaining to protecting all the european sector aren't able to show up into the IMF. This You. Ohydrates. would be the greatest one-time electrical power within the pay for, curbing 17% about their voting legal rights in addition to within the fishing hook for any have in every possibility debts.

Even although National government hasn't already proposed adding almost any cutting edge bucks for those IMF, it truly is having to make sure you struggle Republicans throughout The legislature around the subject. GOP congress would like to rescind any $108 billion dollars Ough. Ohydrates. personal line of credit into the IMF endorsed virtually 3 years previously, in addition to inhibit virtually any Oughout. Ohydrates. dollars with getting working pertaining to Eu bailouts.

White Property spokesman The author Carney with Tuesday proclaimed that IMF "has major resources" and even "American taxpayers are not likely to really need to try to make any longer responsibilities to IMF. "

Uganda: nomads face an attack on their way of life

Three young Jei cattle herders firmly grasp a young white cow. Moding Ngolapus tightens a string round its scraggy neck, while his friend takes a roughly made bow,Canada goose crouches and aims a blunt arrow from about 3ft away.

His first and second shots fail to even pierce the flesh,Canada goose jakke but the third finds an artery without severing it. The cow does not flinch as its blood squirts out and is collected in a bowl. Ngolapus pinches the wound, which clots quickly, then eases the string. It's all very precise, conducted in silence and over in two minutes. The cow's blood will be mixed with milk to make a liquid meal called ekacel.

This is Lobelai cattle camp in the heart of Karamoja province,Canada goose parka north-eastern Uganda, a moving "city" of 10,000 or more cows which is home to about 300 mainly young Jei warrior nomads, who ceaselessly drive their herds across the 27,000 square miles of semi-arid land bordering Kenya and South Sudan.

The climate is harsh; water and pasture is scarce; for generations the Jei and other semi-nomadic clans,Canada goose trillium such as the Dodoth, have raided each other in constant low-level wars. Claiming all cattle as their own, they rustle – and in turn are raided – by fellow Karamojong groups as well as Turkana tribes from Kenya and the Toposa groups in South Sudan.

But now the Karamojong tribes' days as nomads and warriors may be numbered. Ugandan government policies, backed by EU funds, are rapidly dismantling ancient pastoral systems just as climate change is biting with more frequent and intense droughts and rains.

More than 190 countries are preparing to meet on Mondayin Durban, South Africa, for the next round of UN climate talks. Africa's estimated 20 million nomadic herders will not be directly represented in the talks, but their fate depends on attempts to reduce carbon emissions. If temperatures increase and droughts intensify in Africa's drylands, as expected, their animals will be more at risk and conventional farming across vast areas could become impossible.

However, the skills these pastoralists have learned over centuries of adapting to these harsh environments could be of huge value to countries in the frontline of climate change. By constantly moving, they have learned to exploit areas where no one else could survive, and the millions-strong herds of livestock they manage have been shown to have immense economic potential.

According to the government, these "ill-educated" nomads, who regard cattle rustling as a sign of wealth and bravery, are primitive, aid-dependent and must be "sedentarised" – made to settle down and farm in a "modern way".

Suspicions that Uganda has long wanted to eradicate pastoralism in order to clear the land for foreign-owned, mechanised farms, for conservation and for mineral exploitation, have been confirmed in a leaked letter from Janet Museveni, the president's wife, who is the minister in charge of Karamoja affairs. Writing to the head of the EU delegation in Kampala, she said food aid money to the region, which regularly experiences hunger, is to be phased out, with the Karamojong families having to depend more on homegrown food. The EU has given Uganda £3.9m to fund a three-year development programme in Karamoja, with nearly all the money intended to make the nomads settle.

"We know the dangers of pastoralism outweigh its benefits. The people suffer because they are depending on old methods of work and their knowledge is never informed by input from anywhere else. Their children fail on education because they are always on the move. We cannot romanticise about nomadism as a way of life… it is a danger we have to fight like we fight all other social ills," wrote Museveni.

In her letter, she says the nomadic way of life is "outmoded", and she gives Israel as an example of a people who live in an arid land without being pastoralists. "As people learned to harness nature, they became civilised and settled down and developed slowly but surely. Life changed for the better," she said.

The Ugandan government, according to Museveni, now plans to "exploit the potential of Karamoja", a move which is expected to involve offering large tracts of Karamoja land to foreign corporations to grow biofuels, as well as designating more "conservation" and mining areas. This, say critics, will only increase conflict and hunger, force more young people to move into cities, and will destroy a rich way of life that has proved resilient and economically viable.

In fact, research by the International Institute for Environment and Development in London shows that nomadism is ideally suited to Africa's semi-arid lands, especially as they are now experiencing increasing droughts, floods and unpredictable rains. It found that the nomadic cattle of west Africa, Ethiopia and Kenya produced more and better quality meat and generated more cash per hectare than "modern" Australian and American ranches.

"The latest pastoral production systems are one with the rangelands, ecologically inseparable and inherently sustainable, particularly in the face of climate change," said Saverio Krätli, editor of Nomadic Peoples, the official journal of the Commission on Nomadic Peoples. "The assumption remains that pastoralism equals underdevelopment, and therefore pastoralists' only move towards development is stepping out of pastoralism. In fact, it makes a substantial contribution to both national and regional economies," he says.

Governments have steadily pushed Africa's estimated 50 million semi-nomadic pastoralists from their traditional lands. Millions of hectares which were used to graze cattle in Ethiopia, Senegal, Mali, Chad, Kenya and other sub-Saharan countries have been lost to sedentary farming and conservation over the past 50 years, say the authors of Modern and Mobile, the institute study.

"Perceptions of their archaic life belie the fact that they have completely adapted to their environment," says Pascal Pan Vuga, a British-trained Ugandan vet who has spent 17 years working with the Karamojong. "They love their cows, they protect them, worship them. They will give their lives for them and they name themselves after them. The cow and the human can be very close to each other. They have a remarkable culture, based on rituals, slaughter, observation and interpretation. They read their cows' intestines to decide whether to move. It is surprisingly accurate. If they say something will happen, it usually does."

Climate change, he says, is an added problem. "Traditionally, they have coping mechanisms to deal with an unreliable climate. Now they are seeing even less rain, and it compounds problems. There are so many factors undermining their life. Climate change is an aggravating but important one."

Many pastoralists are now reluctantly moving towards settled farming. "Life has become very difficult and the weather is hard to predict," said Paul Loyo, a Jei from Nasapiri village. "We do not know when a season will end or start, and when the rains come they are very heavy and destroy the crops. We have no guns to protect ourselves. The government should disarm all communities."

But while pastoralists are able to adapt to climate change by moving great distances in search of better pastures, cultivators are largely unable to respond and do not know when or what to plant.

In Kenya, the semi-nomadic Maasai tribes near the border with Tanzania are also facing unreliable rains and floods.

"I have only 10 cows now and it's not enough. We sell them to pay for schooling, shelter. They are life to us," says Orumoi Evans. "Now I have to grow maize and vegetables. But pastoralism is more secure than cultivating. You cannot rely on the weather for growing food, but we do know where to go to find pasture."

James Murdoch Denies Misleading Parliamentary Panel

James Murdoch, the News Corporation executive, left Parliament after being questioned in the phone hacking scandal.

LONDON — Nothing rattled James Murdoch. Not being compared to the Mafia boss of a criminal enterprise run on fear and omertà. Not being accused of being willfully blind,Canada goose shockingly incurious or curiously casual about his corporation’s money.
During two and a half hours of forensic, skeptical and even rude questioning from a parliamentary panel on Thursday, Mr. Murdoch, the 38-year-old deputy chief operating officer of News Corporation,Expedition parka never wavered from his original account: that he had learned only recently that phone hacking had been widespread at the company’s tabloid News of the World, now defunct.

He said he had never misled the committee in earlier testimony in July. And he all but accused two former underlings,Canada goose jacket whose accounts directly contradicted his, of lying about it.

Much was riding on how Mr. Murdoch handled the lawmakers’ questioning, including his personal credibility and the health of the News Corporation media empire. The hacking scandal has tarnished the company,Expedition parka forced it to summarily shut down a newspaper, scuttled its $12 billion bid to acquire the satellite giant British Sky Broadcasting, destroyed its symbiotic relationship with Britain’s political establishment, and added to the strains between Mr. Murdoch and his father, Rupert, the company’s chairman.

At least 16 former employees have been arrested, including two former editors of The News of the World. (None has yet been charged.) A number of executives, including Les Hinton, publisher of The Wall Street Journal and chief executive of Dow Jones, have resigned.

Throughout his appearance before the panel, the House of Commons’ committee on culture, media and sport, a calm and confident Mr. Murdoch sought to portray hacking as a problem of the past and something that had forced the company to re-evaluate its practices.

“It is a matter of great regret that things went wrong,” he said. Mr. Murdoch said he had first been made aware of an unresolved hacking problem in the spring of 2008, when he was briefly executive chairman of News International, News Corporation’s British newspaper arm. That was when company executives asked for his approval to settle a case with Gordon Taylor, chief executive of the Professional Footballers’ Association, who had accused The News of the World of hacking his phone.

The executives had in their possession several pieces of internal evidence showing that Mr. Taylor was right, and that phone hacking at The News of the World was not limited to one reporter or one incident, as the company would later publicly and repeatedly assert. But Mr. Murdoch said that no one showed any evidence to him, even as he was urged to approve a large payment to Mr. Taylor.

“None of these things were made available to me or discussed with me,” he said. “I was given sufficient information to authorize an increase in the settlement offer. But I was given no more than that.”

His assertion directly contradicted the testimony of two former executives — Colin Myler, then the editor of The News of the World, and Tom Crone, then News International’s chief legal officer. The pair contacted the committee in July, after Mr. Murdoch’s initial testimony, to say that he had not told the truth. They had indeed, they asserted, told him about an incendiary piece of evidence, the “for Neville” e-mail (a reference to Neville Thurlbeck, the chief reporter for The News of the World) that contained transcripts of hacked conversations and proved that hacking had gone beyond a single journalist.

Mr. Murdoch said that although he was told the e-mail existed — a shift from his previous testimony, when he claimed never to have heard of it — no one had shown it to him or explained its significance.

“I believe their testimony was misleading, and I dispute it,” he said of Mr. Myler’s and Mr. Crone’s statements.

Later Thursday, Mr. Crone released a statement saying that Mr. Murdoch was being “disingenuous” at best.

“The simple truth is that he was told by us in 2008 about the damning e-mail and what it meant in terms of wider News of the World involvement,” he said.

In his testimony, Mr. Murdoch went out of his way to criticize Mr. Myler, who became editor of The News of the World after the original phone hacking case, in which the newspaper’s royal reporter, Clive Goodman, was jailed in 2007. Mr. Myler should have told him what was going on and fixed it, he said.

“This was the job of the new editor who had come in, for lack of a better word, to clean this up — to make me aware of these things,” he said. He said that in a company of 50,000 employees around the world, “We rely on executives at various levels of the business to behave in a certain way.”

Happy 100th Birthday, Chevrolet

On Nov. 3, 1911, racing driver Louis Chevrolet and ousted General Motors (GM) founder William C. “Billy” Durant, team up to build vehicles. One hundred years later, the company they formed, Chevrolet, is still making cars. The storied brand is responsible for some of America’s most-loved vehicles, from the Corvette, to the Suburban, to the Bel Air. Belstaff Blouson　

Party drug meow meow kills one young Briton a week

At least one person a week dies after taking the dance drug mephedrone, it emerged last night.
Known as ‘meow meow’, it was legal until last April and has been linked to nearly 100 deaths in the past two years.
The figure emerged in a report by government drug advisers, who warn that taking ‘legal highs’ is like playing Russian roulette because users often have no idea what is in them.
Professor Les Iversen, chairman of the Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs, called for new laws to deal with the ‘uncontrolled market’ in legal highs.
He said these substances were luring non-drug users into risking their health. Many wrongly believed anything that had not been banned was safe.
The report reveals it is not uncommon for students to make money selling legal highs directly to their peers or through websites.

Prof Iversen said many of those buying the substances were people who would ‘never dream of going to a back-street drug dealer, but who are happy to take out their mobile phone and credit card and order it to be delivered to their home’.
He added: ‘There is a whole group of people who have started using drugs who before would not have dreamed of doing that.’
Mephedrone – which is taken in powder form, often as a substitute for cocaine – is now a class B drug after its use was criminalised last year.
But in the months before the ban came into force, use of the drug spiralled among clubbers, with some surveys suggesting up to 40 per cent had tried it.
The report found mephedrone caused or contributed to 42 deaths in the UK between late 2009 and October 20 this year. Tests are still being carried out in another 56 suspected cases.
But this may underestimate the true scale of the problem as mephedrone leaves the body quickly after use.
In May last year Rebecca Cardwell, 19, a care worker from Colne, East Lancashire, died after taking mephedrone. She suffered from acute liver failure after collapsing within hours of buying a wrap of the drug for ￡5.
Mephedrone has also been implicated in a number of deaths where users have become depressed and committed suicide.
Prof Iversen said growing numbers of young people were being taken to hospital after using legal highs.
He added: ‘Users are playing a game of Russian roulette. They are buying substances marked as research chemicals.
‘The implication is that you should do the research on yourself to find out whether they’re safe or not.
‘This is a totally uncontrolled, unregulated market.’ The report says children under 16 are most at risk of serious harm from legal highs.
It calls for a new U.S.-style drug law banning any substances similar to those already outlawed.

It says a new body should be established to promptly ban new drugs brought on to the market.
The report urges ministers to put pressure on countries such as China to crack down on websites known to be exporting legal highs to Britain.
Maryon Stewart, whose 21-year-old daughter Hester died after taking the legal high GBL before it was criminalised in 2009, called on ministers to invest in education programmes.
She said: ‘These crazy chemists are making millions while our kids are being harmed.
‘We need to raise awareness and educate children so they know just because it’s legal doesn’t mean it’s safe.’

Sydney's Opera House: Easy on the Eyes, Not the Ears

According to legend, when Danish architect Jorn Utzon entered a 1957 competition to design an opera house in Sydney, his sail-like sketches did not make the cut. Eero Saarinen, a Finnish-born architect on the judging panel, found his revolutionary designs in the scrap pile, fished them out and told the jury he'd found their winner. Today the Sydney Opera House is Australia's most famous building, a UNESCO World Heritage site and one of the world's busiest performing-arts centers, attracting some 4.5 million visitors a year. There's just one glitch: it looks much better than it sounds.

Music insiders have been grumbling about the building for years. Edo de Waart, the former chief conductor of the Sydney Symphony Orchestra, once threatened to boycott the building because of the bad acoustics. Matt Ockenden, an Australian bassoonist, has likened listening to a performance in the Concert Hall to watching it on a 1980s-era television. (See the 11 most endangered historic places.)

A study released this summer confirmed their doubts. A survey of musicians, critics and audience members published in August by Limelight, an Australian music magazine, rated the Sydney Opera House's Opera Theatre as having the worst acoustics out of 20 major venues. The building's Concert Hall also scored poorly, earning a dismal 18th place.

Richard Evans, the chief executive of the Sydney Opera House, wasn't surprised by the results: "We all know about the issues with the Opera House." There have been some acoustic upgrades, he said, but the space is not as "terrific" as it could be. The Opera Theatre is not sufficient in size to produce a good acoustic for opera performances. In the Concert Hall, sawtooth wall panels need to be flattened "so the sound doesn't bounce around," Evans said. The hall also needs an acoustic ceiling over the stage platform, but there are technical difficulties with suspending something so heavy from the roof — not to mention the architectural heritage issues of changing the interior of an icon so radically. (See pictures of Australia.)

The building's acoustic quirks date back to 1967, when New South Wales' Premier Robert Askin decided that the smaller sail, which was supposed to be a theater, should house the opera, and the larger sail, which was to house the opera, should be a concert hall. (At the time, symphonies drew in more crowds than operas did.) As a result, today's Concert Hall has 1,000 seats too many, while the Opera Theatre has a famously tiny pit.

The small pit makes it difficult for musicians to hear one another. "Where I sit as a bassoon player, I can't hear the basses and I can never hear the back of the viola sections," says Ockenden, who is associate principal bassoon at the Australian Opera and Ballet Orchestra. Over the years, the pit has been extended back into the stage. "The more it was extended, the more problems it created," said Fergus Fricke, an honorary associate professor of architecture at the University of Sydney who has done some consulting work for the Sydney Opera House. It created more space, but there was little headroom and the sound that came out from under the stage was far from ideal. (See 10 things to do in Sydney.)

The Concert Hall, meanwhile, is too big and the sound gets lost in the 25-m-high ceiling. Acoustic upgrades in 1973 and 2009 have helped some, but the sound isn't full enough for many music lovers. "In the Concert Hall, you just want to turn the volume knob up, especially when you're sitting at the back," says Limelight editor Francis Merson.

The building can be upgraded — for a price. In March 2009, in a meeting with the Daily Telegraph, Nathan Rees, premier of New South Wales at that time, made headlines by saying that $1 billion should be invested into restoring the building and improving the acoustics. Then Prime Minister Kevin Rudd responded by saying that the project was not a government priority. Evans is now hoping to secure assistance from the state government in time for the building's 40th birthday, in 2013.

For now, performers work around the problem. "It's not the biggest pit in the world, but we make it work," says Lyndon Terracini, artistic director of Opera Australia. Next year, when Erich Wolfgang Korngold's Die tote Stadt hits the stage, the 83-piece orchestra will play in an adjacent studio, not the cramped pit, and the music will be broadcast to the audience using state-of-the-art surround sound. "It's become almost fashionable to criticize the Sydney Opera House, but it's really not that bad," he says. "Ultimately, the problem with the Opera House is that it's one of the greatest buildings in the world. There is no way that its interior can live up to that."

Read more: http://www.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,2097247,00.html#ixzz1bIhDe6sq

Horrific footage shows girl, two, run over TWICE as dozens of people ignore her lying stricken on the road

Video footage of a two-year-old girl being run over by a van and ignored by passers-by in China has sparked outrage after being posted online.
The graphic surveillance video of the incident in Foshan city, Guandong province, shows the girl run over by a van, which then drives off leaving her bleeding on a narrow street.
More than a dozen people walk or drive past the critically injured girl, named Yueyue, without going to her aid before she is run over by a second truck.
A woman - the 19th person to pass the girl - pulls her to the side of the street before her mother, a migrant worker in the city, rushes into the picture.
The girl, named online as Yue Yuem, is in a coma in hospital according to Xinhua news agency following the incident on October 13.
China Daily, the country's official English-language newspaper, said she had been declared 'brain dead' and could die at any time.

Both drivers who ran her over have been arrested, but internet users have flooded microblogs over the apathy of the people who left her to die.
China's economic boom and the growing disparity between the rich and poor have made changing social values a contentious topic, with some lamenting what they see as materialism replacing morals.
Yueyue's father Wang told Chinese television: 'Yueyue is so lovely. If I quarrelled with her mother and if her mother cried, she would tell us not to cry, she always tried to amuse us.
'I just hope my child will wake up and call me Dad again.'
On China's microblog service Sina Weibo, one user called the incident 'the shame of the Chinese people'.
Another user, under the name Xiaozhong001, wrote: 'Really, what is up with our society? I saw this and my heart went cold.
'Everyone needs to do some soul-searching about ending this kind of indifference.'
Many people in China are hesitant to help people who appear to be in distress over fears they will be blamed.
High-profile law suits have ended with good Samaritans ordered to pay hefty fines to individuals they sought to help.

WIFE OF ‘DEL BOY’ CROOK HID ￡5K IN HER KNICKERS

THE “cushty” lifestyle of a real-life Del Boy ended in jail when ￡5,000 stuffed in his wife’s knickers fell out as she was quizzed by police.
Ducker-and-diver Trevor Wales, who had managed to stash bank notes worth ￡7,000 in similar fashion, ran a thriving fake goods scam.
He had his own Rodney-style -sidekick in the form of gullible son Richard. And in keeping with TV’s Only Fools and Horses, the pair even drove around in a replica of Del’s three-wheel yellow Reliant, daubed Trotter’s Independent Trading.
They were on their way to becoming millionaires through their dodgy dealings when it was found they had been running a six-year counterfeit tobacco operation.
Wales, 54, and his 28-year-old son were jailed this week for failing to pay ￡200,000 in duty on imported illegal cigarettes. Their lucrative scams enabled them to buy two homes, as well as jet-skis, luxury cars, caravans and motorbikes.
When police first raided the house in Leeds that Wales shared with his wife Mary, 53, they discovered the semi had been renovated with a sprawling two-storey extension complete with gym.
Officers found over ￡16,000 in cash, prompting a detailed financial investigation into their dealings.
Police returned unannounced nine months later in December 2009, and as they arrested Mrs Wales they became aware that bank notes had begun dropping out of the bottom of her skirt. A bundle worth ￡5,000 had been stuffed inside her knickers.
When Det Con Carly North, who led the investigation, asked why she had the money in her underwear, she replied: “I did not want you to take it.” Son Richard, who lived nearby, had bought his house with a ￡27,000 cash deposit, then renovated it with a games room, plus a landscaped training area for his greyhounds.
Leeds Crown Court heard that the family had been dealing in fake and foreign tobacco between 2003 and 2009, raking in hundreds of thousands of pounds.
But in true Trotter-style they lived far beyond their means, blowing ￡47,000 at a city centre casino. Prosecutor Jonathan Sandiford said Trevor and Mary Wales had a legitimate income of just ￡7,400 a year during the offending period, while their son had no income and occasionally claimed benefits.
He added: “The Wales family between them spent far more money than could be explained by their income. All three defendants in the dock to live well beyond their legitimate means.”
The barrister said ￡144,000 was paid into two of Mrs Wales’s accounts. Jet-skis cost the family ￡20,000, while a Mitsubishi Shogun was bought as a gift.
Judge Rodney Grant jailed Wales senior for two years and three months, and his son for 15 months. Mrs Wales – the banker – escaped with a suspended 12-month sentence.
Speaking after the case, Det Con North said: “I’d like to think Del Boy himself would have drawn a line well before the level of offending these family members got to.”

GIVE MARTIN JOHNSON ANOTHER GO? YES, HISTORY IS ON THE SIDE OF MARTIN

THEIR own history must tell the Rugby Football Union that the last thing they should be considering in the overwrought aftermath of England’s premature World Cup exit is dispensing with Martin Johnson as team manager.
Losing in the quarter-final is a failure. Of that there is no question, but so it was in 1999 when Clive Woodward survived calls for his head and was able to put his ’99 trauma to good use in plotting England’s 2003 triumph.
You can see the same again with All Blacks coach Graham Henry. The New Zealand Union controversially stuck with him after 2007 and now they are favourites to win four years later.
In Johnson’s debit column is that the English exit from New Zealand has occurred when he has had all the assistance in player availability and welfare that was denied to both his post-Woodward predecessors, Andy Robinson and Brian Ashton.
But when RFU professional rugby director Rob Andrew makes his choice, in the next six weeks he says, he has to be convinced that there is someone out there who can do a better job of heading up the England operation.
Johnson and Andrew are old playing partners who were in England sides together from 1993-98 as well as the 1993 Lions.
It was Andrew who, as elite rugby director, was responsible for supplanting Ashton with Johnson in 2008. But that change did come about under heavy pressure from on high – specifically Martyn Thomas when he was RFU chairman – and Andrew was uncomfortable with that action .
But the idea that he would consider doing something similar now, albeit with Johnson as the victim, is not only remote but ignores the close relationship they have had during Johnson’s tenure.
Johnson does not coach; he manages. So, for the most part, did Woodward. The far more meaningful question is whether Johnson should change, or even be made to change, the coaches at his disposal.
Here again he is on contentious ground. He retained Ashton’s coaching team – some, such as John Wells and Graham Rowntree, personal friends from Leicester – and never saw fit to change them.
His only addition was his Australian attacking coach Brian Smith, and even Smith is a Leicester old boy. The only outsider from this elite clique was, and is, defence coach Mike Ford.
He wants Johnson to stay. According to Ford, there is no one else remotely capable of taking charge of the England set-up with Johnson’s authority and reputation .
“What Johnno has done in the last three years is create a culture,” said Ford.
“It takes time. It doesn’t happen overnight.
“You have to keep Johnno at the helm. We are beginning to get a foundation under him. The RFU can’t go and appoint someone new again. Where are they going to find another guy with his sort of experience? We need to get that continuity. You have to have faith.”
There is an urgency about Andrew’s RFU review in that Johnson or any successor will have an England Six Nations squad of 32 to select on New Year’s Day.
The review will also be looking at Ford and the other coaches. “Will there be pressure to change? I expect so,” added Ford. “But whatever happens to me, I genuinely believe Johnno is the right man, so let him carry on and pick his own staff. If England keep him to the next World Cup, we are going to find some success.”
The England players unanimously agree.
“They would be absolutely foolish not to keep him in the role,” said scrum-half Ben Youngs.
“You can ask any of the 30 guys and they would say the same thing.”
Youngsters such as Youngs, 22, and prop Alex Corbisiero, 23, detect a clearer path to the 2015 World Cup under Johnson than any alternative.
“Every player in that dressing room wants Martin Johnson to stay,” said Corbisiero.
“He understands Test rugby and understands the players’ mindset. I hope he gets the chance to finish what he has started.”
Perhaps these are not the best judges . But even so, they are right.

AMANDA KNOX'S ITALIAN BOYFRIEND INVITED TO VISIT FAMILY IN US

The Knox family have invited him and his family to visit them in Seattle when the media furore has died down.
Dr Francesco Sollecito, speaking after his son returned home, said: “We each went our separate ways after the sentence but through my daughter I heard that Amanda’s stepdad invited us to Seattle. It is too soon to say whether we will go.”
The frenzy that greeted Amanda Knox’s homecoming yesterday was in stark contrast to the subdued return of 27-year-old Raffaele to his parents’ home after the appeal decision freed him from a four-year jail ordeal. He had previously been sentenced to 25 years for the murder of British student Meredith Kercher.
The wealthy doctor’s son, who met Knox while finishing a degree in computer science at Perugia University, declined to make a public statement.
But Dr Sollecito addressed reporters outside the family home in Bisceglie, near Bari on the southern Adriatic coast. He said: “He tried to sleep but he could only rest for a few hours, and he woke up before I did.
“We had breakfast together after all this time. He sat down at the table, had a coffee and ate some fruit – they are the small things that say so much, the things he hasn’t been able to do for four years.
“It’s as if Raffaele has been reborn. Today is a beautiful day and we’re enjoying it completely.”

Somalia bombing points to militants' grim goals

Reporting from Johannesburg, South Africa, and— A suicide truck bombing that killed an estimated 70 people, including students hoping for foreign scholarships, underscores the intent of an Islamic militant group to ensure that Somalia remains ungovernable and a secure base for its global struggle against the West.

U.S. officials say the Shabab, which claimed responsibility for the bombing Tuesday in Mogadishu, the capital, appears to be strengthening its ties with Al Qaeda's affiliate in Yemen. They fear it also is increasing cooperation with an extremist network in Nigeria.

In Somalia, the Shabab has blocked aid to famine victims and is reportedly driving thousands out of aid camps in what experts say may turn into a death march back to their farms. Many are unlikely to survive the effects of hunger and disease, analysts say.

Such tactics are likely to worsen tension between Shabab clan leaders who want to fight Somalia's weak, internationally backed transitional federal government, or TFG, for territory and influence, and more extreme elements who seek only a base of operations against the West, experts say. The latter faction controls the group's finances, they say.

The Shabab's interest in maintaining Somalia as a platform for fighting the West doesn't require it to control the country, said one expert.

"If all Shabab has to do is prevent the TFG from exercising control over the capital, then these kind of attacks are all they need," said Ken Menkhaus, an associate professor at Davidson College in North Carolina.

The Shabab abandoned Mogadishu in August, in what some saw as a sign of military weakness. But it has regrouped and is using terrorist tactics to continue destabilizing the capital without the need to hold territory.

It has been implicated in previous bombings. It claimed responsibility last year for suicide attacks in Kampala, Uganda, that killed 76 people. Somali authorities also blamed it for a 2009 attack on a graduation ceremony of medical students, which killed 24 people, including government ministers, doctors and students.

Tuesday's bombing struck a compound where several government ministries, including half the Cabinet, are based. The blast shattered the front gate and left charred bodies scattered about. People used shawls and blankets to carry away the dead.

"I saw a nursing team putting human limbs onto a sack to carry away," said Mowliid Abdulkadir, surveying the smoke drifting across a scene of chaos.

"It was a horrific scene. We collected 70 corpses inside and on the road," said Ali Muse Sheik, an ambulance coordinator.

There were no reports of casualties among senior officials of the transitional government.

But in a country that has lacked a fully functioning government for two decades, the dead and wounded included some of the few people with real prospects: students waiting outside the Education Ministry for exam results. They were hoping for secondary-school scholarships in Turkey.

The commander of the police Criminal Investigations Department, Adullahi Hassan Barise, identified the bomber as a 20-year-old Kenyan, Asad Abdi Saed. He said the truck initially approached the CID building, opposite the government compound, but was turned away by guards.

The transitional government, which is backed by troops from the African Union, recently announced an ambitious 12-month road map leading to presidential and parliamentary elections next year. But few analysts believe the government is capable of sticking to that timetable.

The chaos in Somalia, even that not directly linked to the Shabab, is taking a toll on the region. The famine has sent thousands of starving people fleeing to refugee camps in neighboring Kenya. Pirates operating off the Somali coast have hijacked ships and kidnapped sailors for ransom. Recently, after security was tightened in Indian Ocean shipping lanes, kidnappers based in Somalia have grabbed European hostages from Kenyan beach communities.

Among the hard-line Shabab leaders are Muktar Abdirahman Godane, who trained in Afghanistan and issued a video in 2009 pledging loyalty to Osama bin Laden. Godane and another leader of the hard-line wing of the group, Ibrahim Haji Jamamee'aad, are from northern Somalia and are on a U.S. list of suspected terrorists.

Menkhaus predicted that the attack would deepen divisions in the movement. However, he said it would not necessarily shake the grip of the hard-liners.

"There's going to be a backlash amongst Somalis that will be pretty fierce, I think," he said. "For the moment, the hard-liners have been able to keep the other Shabab leaders in tow. They're indifferent to the costs of their policies on the Somali community.

PAOLO DI CANIO ‘NOT SEXIST’

IT’S not often that anonymous terse letters come in to this column.

So when a correspondent wrote simply, ‘Swindon Town Football Club are forced to sideline female physio as sexist club manager, Paolo Di Canio, states that women should not play any part in football,’ the facts had to be investigated.

It turns out that Kate Cady has indeed been replaced this week by Paul Godfrey, who used to be at Notts County. The club claim that it was at her request and said they were “disappointed she is leaving”.

She is still working with the club’s centre of excellence on a part-time basis. On the face of it, then, Di Canio is not sexist after all.

Glad to put that straight – although next time an email to matt.dunn@express.co.uk will suffice.