A United States court of appeals gave Argentina until March 29 to submit a plan for the repayment of $1.33 billion in debt that the country defaulted on 11 years ago. N.M.L. Capital, a subsidiary of the New York-based hedge fund Elliott Management, is leading a lawsuit among bondholders who refused Argentina’s 2005 and 2010 debt swaps. Ninety-three percent of creditors agreed to the restructuring in which debt stemming from Argentina’s $100 billion default was exchanged for new issues at 35 cents on the dollar. A judge ruled last fall in favor of creditors, saying that Argentina could not service only some of its debt, and that it had the “financial wherewithal” to pay in full. Speaking to Congress on Friday, President Cristina Fernández de Kirchner said Argentina would pay “these vulture funds” but only according to the same terms and conditions agreed upon for the other creditors. A spokesman for Elliott Management declined to comment.
World Briefing | The Americas: Argentina: U.S. Court Orders Debt Repayment Plan
Label: WorldDavid Bowie Makes Triumphant Comeback with New Album: PEOPLE's Critic
Label: LifestyleForget the moody musings of "Where Are We Now?" – the reflective comeback single that he dropped, seemingly out of nowhere, on his birthday last month (Jan. 8). The Next Day – which, though not released until March 12, began streaming in its entirety on iTunes on Friday – represents much more of an emphatic, energetic return from the 66-year-old Rock and Roll Hall of Famer.
"We'll never be rid of these stars/ But I hope they live forever," sings Bowie, sounding like the immortal rock god he is over the glittering guitar-pop bounce of "The Stars (Are Out Tonight)."
It's one of many driving, guitar-charged tracks on The Next Day: You can just imagine Ziggy Stardust getting his groove on to the bouncy beat of "Dancing Out in Space," while "(You Will) Set the World on Fire" is a rocking, fist-pumping anthem for today's young Americans.
Elsewhere, "Dirty Boys" is a sleazy grinder that, with its saxed-up funkiness, harks back to his soulful periods like 1975's Young Americans. In another nod to Bowie's past, The Next Day was produced by Tony Visconti, who also worked on the star's Berlin Trilogy albums from 1977 to 1979.
On one of the standouts, the melodic, midtempo "I'd Rather Be High," the album takes a political turn with Bowie's anti-war message: "I'd rather be dead or out of my head/ Then training these guns on those men in the sand."
It's moments like these that make The Next Day a triumphant comeback from a much-missed icon.
WHO: Slight cancer risk after Japan nuke accident
Label: HealthLONDON (AP) — Two years after Japan's nuclear plant disaster, an international team of experts said Thursday that residents of areas hit by the highest doses of radiation face an increased cancer risk so small it probably won't be detectable.
In fact, experts calculated that increase at about 1 extra percentage point added to a Japanese infant's lifetime cancer risk.
"The additional risk is quite small and will probably be hidden by the noise of other (cancer) risks like people's lifestyle choices and statistical fluctuations," said Richard Wakeford of the University of Manchester, one of the authors of the report. "It's more important not to start smoking than having been in Fukushima."
The report was issued by the World Health Organization, which asked scientists to study the health effects of the disaster in Fukushima, a rural farming region.
On March 11, 2011, an earthquake and tsunami knocked out the Fukushima plant's power and cooling systems, causing meltdowns in three reactors and spewing radiation into the surrounding air, soil and water. The most exposed populations were directly under the plumes of radiation in the most affected communities in Fukushima, which is about 150 miles (240 kilometers) north of Tokyo.
In the report, the highest increases in risk are for people exposed as babies to radiation in the most heavily affected areas. Normally in Japan, the lifetime risk of developing cancer of an organ is about 41 percent for men and 29 percent for women. The new report said that for infants in the most heavily exposed areas, the radiation from Fukushima would add about 1 percentage point to those numbers.
Experts had been particularly worried about a spike in thyroid cancer, since radioactive iodine released in nuclear accidents is absorbed by the thyroid, especially in children. After the Chernobyl disaster, about 6,000 children exposed to radiation later developed thyroid cancer because many drank contaminated milk after the accident.
In Japan, dairy radiation levels were closely monitored, but children are not big milk drinkers there.
The WHO report estimated that women exposed as infants to the most radiation after the Fukushima accident would have a 70 percent higher chance of getting thyroid cancer in their lifetimes. But thyroid cancer is extremely rare and one of the most treatable cancers when caught early. A woman's normal lifetime risk of developing it is about 0.75 percent. That number would rise by 0.5 under the calculated increase for women who got the highest radiation doses as infants.
Wakeford said the increase may be so small it will probably not be observable.
For people beyond the most directly affected areas of Fukushima, Wakeford said the projected cancer risk from the radiation dropped dramatically. "The risks to everyone else were just infinitesimal."
David Brenner of Columbia University in New York, an expert on radiation-induced cancers, said that although the risk to individuals is tiny outside the most contaminated areas, some cancers might still result, at least in theory. But they'd be too rare to be detectable in overall cancer rates, he said.
Brenner said the numerical risk estimates in the WHO report were not surprising. He also said they should be considered imprecise because of the difficulty in determining risk from low doses of radiation. He was not connected with the WHO report.
Some experts said it was surprising that any increase in cancer was even predicted.
"On the basis of the radiation doses people have received, there is no reason to think there would be an increase in cancer in the next 50 years," said Wade Allison, an emeritus professor of physics at Oxford University, who also had no role in developing the new report. "The very small increase in cancers means that it's even less than the risk of crossing the road," he said.
WHO acknowledged in its report that it relied on some assumptions that may have resulted in an overestimate of the radiation dose in the general population.
Gerry Thomas, a professor of molecular pathology at Imperial College London, accused the United Nations health agency of hyping the cancer risk.
"It's understandable that WHO wants to err on the side of caution, but telling the Japanese about a barely significant personal risk may not be helpful," she said.
Thomas said the WHO report used inflated estimates of radiation doses and didn't properly take into account Japan's quick evacuation of people from Fukushima.
"This will fuel fears in Japan that could be more dangerous than the physical effects of radiation," she said, noting that people living under stress have higher rates of heart problems, suicide and mental illness.
In Japan, Norio Kanno, the chief of Iitate village, in one of the regions hardest hit by the disaster, harshly criticized the WHO report on Japanese public television channel NHK, describing it as "totally hypothetical."
Many people who remain in Fukushima still fear long-term health risks from the radiation, and some refuse to let their children play outside or eat locally grown food.
Some restrictions have been lifted on a 12-mile (20-kilometer) zone around the nuclear plant. But large sections of land in the area remain off-limits. Many residents aren't expected to be able to return to their homes for years.
Kanno accused the report's authors of exaggerating the cancer risk and stoking fear among residents.
"I'm enraged," he said.
___
Mari Yamaguchi in Tokyo and AP Science Writer Malcolm Ritter in New York contributed to this report.
__
Online:
WHO report: http://bit.ly/YDCXcb
World Briefing | Europe: Ireland: Suspect in Terrorism Case Faces Extradition to U.S.
Label: World
The United States government has petitioned the Irish High Court to extradite an Algerian man living in Ireland on terrorism charges relating to a plot to assassinate a Swedish artist, officials said Thursday. The United States alleges that the man, Ali Charaf Damache, planned to set up terrorist training camps and kill several Europeans, including a Swedish artist, Lars Vilks, whose sketch of the Prophet Muhammad’s head on a dog, published in 2007, had enraged the Islamic world. On Wednesday, Mr. Damache pleaded guilty in the Waterford Circuit Court to making a menacing phone call to an American peace activist, a charge for which he was arrested and detained in 2010. The judge sentenced him to time served and released him, but Mr. Damache was immediately rearrested on the American extradition warrant. Mr. Damache arrived in Ireland in 2000 and married an Irish woman in 2002. The relationship ended in 2008 and he then married an American citizen, Jamie Paulin Ramirez. Ms. Ramirez has pleaded guilty in the United States to charges of conspiring with Colleen LaRose, also known as Jihad Jane, to support and train terrorists.
The 5 Most Infamous Oscar Dress Mishaps
Label: LifestyleFrom Anne Hathaway's controversial Prada swap to Natalie Portman's Dior diss, see how stars have created fashion drama on the red carpet
Credit: Steve Granitz/WireImage
Updated: Wednesday Feb 27, 2013 | 03:25 PM EST
By: Kate Hogan
Subscribe Now
WHO: Slight cancer risk after Japan nuke accident
Label: HealthLONDON (AP) — Two years after Japan's nuclear plant disaster, an international team of experts said Thursday that residents of areas hit by the highest doses of radiation face an increased cancer risk so small it probably won't be detectable.
In fact, experts calculated that increase at about 1 extra percentage point added to a Japanese infant's lifetime cancer risk.
"The additional risk is quite small and will probably be hidden by the noise of other (cancer) risks like people's lifestyle choices and statistical fluctuations," said Richard Wakeford of the University of Manchester, one of the authors of the report. "It's more important not to start smoking than having been in Fukushima."
The report was issued by the World Health Organization, which asked scientists to study the health effects of the disaster in Fukushima, a rural farming region.
On March 11, 2011, an earthquake and tsunami knocked out the Fukushima plant's power and cooling systems, causing meltdowns in three reactors and spewing radiation into the surrounding air, soil and water. The most exposed populations were directly under the plumes of radiation in the most affected communities in Fukushima, which is about 150 miles (240 kilometers) north of Tokyo.
In the report, the highest increases in risk are for people exposed as babies to radiation in the most heavily affected areas. Normally in Japan, the lifetime risk of developing cancer of an organ is about 41 percent for men and 29 percent for women. The new report said that for infants in the most heavily exposed areas, the radiation from Fukushima would add about 1 percentage point to those numbers.
Experts had been particularly worried about a spike in thyroid cancer, since radioactive iodine released in nuclear accidents is absorbed by the thyroid, especially in children. After the Chernobyl disaster, about 6,000 children exposed to radiation later developed thyroid cancer because many drank contaminated milk after the accident.
In Japan, dairy radiation levels were closely monitored, but children are not big milk drinkers there.
The WHO report estimated that women exposed as infants to the most radiation after the Fukushima accident would have a 70 percent higher chance of getting thyroid cancer in their lifetimes. But thyroid cancer is extremely rare and one of the most treatable cancers when caught early. A woman's normal lifetime risk of developing it is about 0.75 percent. That number would rise by 0.5 under the calculated increase for women who got the highest radiation doses as infants.
Wakeford said the increase may be so small it will probably not be observable.
For people beyond the most directly affected areas of Fukushima, Wakeford said the projected cancer risk from the radiation dropped dramatically. "The risks to everyone else were just infinitesimal."
David Brenner of Columbia University in New York, an expert on radiation-induced cancers, said that although the risk to individuals is tiny outside the most contaminated areas, some cancers might still result, at least in theory. But they'd be too rare to be detectable in overall cancer rates, he said.
Brenner said the numerical risk estimates in the WHO report were not surprising. He also said they should be considered imprecise because of the difficulty in determining risk from low doses of radiation. He was not connected with the WHO report.
Some experts said it was surprising that any increase in cancer was even predicted.
"On the basis of the radiation doses people have received, there is no reason to think there would be an increase in cancer in the next 50 years," said Wade Allison, an emeritus professor of physics at Oxford University, who also had no role in developing the new report. "The very small increase in cancers means that it's even less than the risk of crossing the road," he said.
WHO acknowledged in its report that it relied on some assumptions that may have resulted in an overestimate of the radiation dose in the general population.
Gerry Thomas, a professor of molecular pathology at Imperial College London, accused the United Nations health agency of hyping the cancer risk.
"It's understandable that WHO wants to err on the side of caution, but telling the Japanese about a barely significant personal risk may not be helpful," she said.
Thomas said the WHO report used inflated estimates of radiation doses and didn't properly take into account Japan's quick evacuation of people from Fukushima.
"This will fuel fears in Japan that could be more dangerous than the physical effects of radiation," she said, noting that people living under stress have higher rates of heart problems, suicide and mental illness.
In Japan, Norio Kanno, the chief of Iitate village, in one of the regions hardest hit by the disaster, harshly criticized the WHO report on Japanese public television channel NHK, describing it as "totally hypothetical."
Many people who remain in Fukushima still fear long-term health risks from the radiation, and some refuse to let their children play outside or eat locally grown food.
Some restrictions have been lifted on a 12-mile (20-kilometer) zone around the nuclear plant. But large sections of land in the area remain off-limits. Many residents aren't expected to be able to return to their homes for years.
Kanno accused the report's authors of exaggerating the cancer risk and stoking fear among residents.
"I'm enraged," he said.
___
Mari Yamaguchi in Tokyo and AP Science Writer Malcolm Ritter in New York contributed to this report.
__
Online:
WHO report: http://bit.ly/YDCXcb
IHT Rendezvous: Eve Best Returns to the Globe, This Time as a Director
Label: WorldLONDON — The recent press conference announcing the 2013 season at Shakespeare’s Globe on one level seemed like variations on an ongoing theme.
A onetime Falstaff at this address, Roger Allam, is returning to open the season as Prospero in “The Tempest,” directed by Jeremy Herrin, while the perennial favorite, “A Midsummer Night’s Dream,” will be seen in May in a new staging, this time from the Globe’s artistic director, Dominic Dromgoole. The 2011 Olivier winner Michelle Terry (“Tribes”) will play Titania.
The international season that so galvanized the space for six weeks last spring will return in a greatly pared-down form, and there will be three new plays, including one, “Blue Stockings” by Jessica Swale, that tells of the first female students at Cambridge University.
But it’s the last in the trio of supernaturally charged Shakespeares that promises to break fresh theatrical ground. In what represents her first-ever stab (you’ll forgive the word in context) at directing, the much-laureled actress Eve Best will stage a new production in June of “Macbeth.” Joseph Millson and Samantha Spiro have signed on as the murderous couple at the play’s black, bleak heart.
What prompted one of the most accomplished stage performers of her generation (an actress with an Olivier Award and two Tony nominations) to make the shift? The answer was arrived at via a lengthy phone call to a remote island in Denmark, where Ms. Best, 41, is currently filming “Someone You Love” for the director Lars von Trier’s Zentropa production group. This film’s specific director is Pernille Fischer Christensen.
To hear Ms. Best describe it, she thought her time at the Globe was finished, at least for a while, following a triumphant 2011 production of “Much Ado About Nothing” in which she played Beatrice opposite Charles Edwards’s no less witty and scintillating Benedick. (That staging opened within days of a contrasting commercial production of the same play, with David Tennant and Catherine Tate, and trumped its starrier competitor hands down.)
“I love the Globe so much,” Ms. Best recalled, “and wanted any excuse to spend some time there, having played Beatrice which was just my most favorite part ever. But I did think I was sort of running out of parts to play for a little while until I get into the world of Cleopatra and those kinds of parts” — that’s to say, Shakespeare’s more senior women.
But all that was before Mr. Dromgoole surprised Ms. Best with an offer to take on the directing of the Shakespeare tragedy in which she had made her Globe debut in 2001, opposite Jasper Britton.
“I put myself forward to direct something thinking that they might say yes in a couple of years and that if they did say yes they might start me off with something light or something simpler or more obscure,” she said.
“I was not prepared for them to turn around and say, ‘Yes, all right, and what about “Macbeth?”’ Ms. Best continued, delight evident in her voice. “It took me back. My first response was: ‘Absolutely no way; you must be kidding!’”
The play is particularly challenging at the Globe. Open to the elements, the theater is a tricky fit for a text suffused with darkness, and it can be hard to focus the gathering intensity of the Macbeths’ toxic rise and fall.
“We are in the broad daylight and the open air,” Ms. Best acknowledged, “and that particular circular shape is certainly going to have a significant effect on the kind of production ours is. We can’t set it in the dark with candles, so we just have to embrace what it is that the Globe will give us: I’m very interested in just seeing the play as clearly as we possibly can and focusing on the human relationships within it.”
Mr. Dromgoole for his part said he thought Ms. Best would be able to meet the play head-on without lots of additional mumbo jumbo. “I wanted someone who I thought could just let [“Macbeth”] play itself rather than forcing it down a tunnel of darkness.”
As it happens, Ms. Best has firsthand knowledge of both central roles. In addition to acting Lady Macbeth at the Globe, she participated in workshops of the play in New York with the Scottish actor Alan Cumming in which she played the title role opposite Mr. Cumming’s Lady. Mr. Cumming is soon to open his own solo take on the play on Broadway.
(For those collecting “Macbeths,” the West End is now hosting the film actor James McAvoy in a modern-dress, gory, commendably visceral version. That one, at the Trafalgar Studios, will have finished roughly two months before Ms. Best’s begins.)
“What’s really lovely about this play — and all Shakespeare plays obviously — is that they are so magnificently and eminently flexible,” said Ms. Best, who was sounding in no way deterred by other productions arriving before hers. “They can encompass 6 or 8 or 10 productions all going on at the same time, all equally fascinating, all equally interesting, with all kinds of different approaches.”
Nor was she sounding spooked by a famously hexed play that has on occasion brought disaster in its wake. Whereas theater lore, for instance, often insists that those involved with this text refer to it as “the Scottish play,” Ms. Best was having none of that.
“I’ve been saying it like mad,” she said. “If we’re going to be working on it for two months, life’s too short to be worried.”
Billie Joe Armstrong Comes Clean About Rehab
Label: LifestyleThe meltdown forced Armstrong to enter an outpatient rehab program for a month and in the latest issue of Rolling Stone, the frontman, who turned 41 this month, reveals his struggle to get sober.
"I'm a blackout drinker," he reveals. "That's basically what happened [that night]."
Leading up to that infamous performance, Armstrong was struggling with a dependence on pills for anxiety and insomnia, combined with a heavy drinking problem. After the concert, he agreed to enter an outpatient rehab program for a month.
Although he declines to specify what type of medications he was taking, he tells the magazine, "I started combining them to a point where I didn't know what I was taking during the day and what I was taking at night. It was just this routine. My backpack sounded like a giant baby rattle [from all of the bottles inside]."
Armstrong, who has been married to wife Adrienne since 1994 and has two sons, Joseph and Jakob, also reveals how hard it was to go through withdrawal.
"That was gruesome, laying on the bathroom floor and just feeling like ... [pauses] I didn't realize how much of that stuff affected me." He also opens up about the toll it took on his family: "I kept [the withdrawal] away from my sons pretty good ... [And my wife] knew the deal. I'm sure it was rough for her to see me going through this."
Now, the musician insists he's on the mend and no longer drinking. "I want to put on good shows," says Armstrong, who will resume touring with Green Day on March 10 in Pomona, Calif. "I want to be reliable."
Armstrong also admits maintaining his sobriety will be a challenge. "There is still the obsession for alcohol," he says. "There's also sleepless nights. But I have to work on it every day. Because I know what goes on out there … I've got to watch my step."
News Analysis: Now Gathering in Rome, a Conclave of Fallible Cardinals
Label: World
Dmitry Lovetsky/Associated Press
St. Peter’s Basilica on Tuesday. Roman Catholic cardinals were gathering at the Vatican amid scandal to choose a new pope.
The sudden resignation of the most senior Roman Catholic cardinal in Britain, who stepped aside on Monday in the face of accusations that he made unwanted sexual advances toward priests years ago, showed that the taint of scandal could force a cardinal from participating in the selection of a new pope.
His exit came as at least a dozen other cardinals tarnished with accusations that they failed to remove priests accused of sexually abusing minors were among those gathering in Rome to prepare for the conclave to select a successor to Pope Benedict XVI. There was no sign that the church’s promise to confront the sexual abuse scandal had led to direct pressure on those cardinals to exempt themselves from the conclave.
Advocates for abuse victims who were in Rome on Tuesday focused particular ire on Cardinal Roger M. Mahony, the former archbishop of Los Angeles, and called for him to be excluded from the conclave. But Cardinal Mahony, who has vigorously defended his record, was already in Rome, posting on Twitter about the weather.
Even stalwart defenders of the church point out that to disqualify Cardinal Mahony would leave many more cardinals similarly vulnerable. Many of the men who will go into the Sistine Chapel to elect a pope they hope will help the church recover from the bruising scandal of sexual abuse have themselves been blemished by it.
“Among bishops and cardinals, certainly the old guys who have been involved for so long, sure they’re going to have blood on their hands,” said Thomas G. Plante, a professor of psychology at Santa Clara University, who has served on the American bishops’ national abuse advisory board and has written three books on sexual abuse. “So when Cardinal Mahony says he’s being scapegoated, in some respects I think he’s right. All the focus is on him, but what about the other guys?”
Among the many challenges facing the church, addressing the wounds caused by sexual abuse is among the top priorities, church analysts say. When Pope Benedict was elected in 2005, many Catholics hoped that his previous experience at the helm of the Vatican office that dealt with abuse cases would result in substantive changes.
Benedict has repeatedly apologized to victims, and listened personally to their testimonies of pain. After the abuse scandal paralyzed the church in Europe in 2010, and began to emerge on other continents, Benedict issued new policies for bishops to follow on handling sexual abuse accusations, and he held a conference at the Vatican on the issue. But despite calls from many Catholics, he never removed prelates who, court cases and documents revealed, put children at risk by failing to report pedophiles or remove them from the priesthood.
It is not that these cardinals behaved so differently from the others, or that they do not have achievements to their names. It is just that they happened to come from pinpoints on the Catholic world map where long-hidden secrets became public because victims organized, government officials investigated, lawyers sued or the news media paid attention.
They include cardinals from Belgium, Chile and Italy. They include the dean of the College of Cardinals, Angelo Sodano, who is accused of taking large monetary gifts from a religious order, the Legion of Christ, and halting an investigation into its founder, the Rev. Marcial Maciel — who was later exposed as a pathological abuser and liar.
They also include cardinals reviled by many in their own countries, like Cardinal Sean Brady, the primate of All Ireland, who survived an uproar after government investigations uncovered endemic cover-ups of the sexual and physical abuse of minors.
“There’s so many of them,” said Justice Anne Burke, a judge in Illinois who served on the American bishops’ first advisory board 10 years ago. “They all have participated in one way or another in having actual information about criminal conduct, and not doing anything about it. What are you going to do? They’re all not going to participate in the conclave?”
Even one cardinal frequently mentioned as a leading candidate for pope has been accused of turning a blind eye toward abuse victims. The Canadian Cardinal Marc Ouellet issued apologies to the many victims of abuse in church boarding schools in Quebec Province, but left behind widespread resentment when he reportedly refused to meet with them.
Bobby Brown Sentenced to 55 Days in Jail in Drunk Driving Case
Label: LifestyleBrown, 44, was pulled over in Studio City, Calif., on Oct. 24 for driving erratically and was arrested when the officer detected "a strong scent of alcohol." He was charged with DUI and driving on a suspended license.
He was also arrested for driving under the influence in March of 2012.
Brown pled no contest to the charges on Tuesday, reports TMZ. He was also ordered to complete an 18-month alcohol treatment program.
The singer, who married Alicia Etheredge in Hawaii in June of 2012, must report to jail by March 20.
