Movie review: 'Red 2' ? - Advocate Magazine

(from L to R) John Malkovich, Mary-Louise Parker, and Bruce Willis return for more senior spy antics in ?Red 2?.

Much like its 2010 predecessor, based on Warren Ellis and Cully Hammer?s comic book about elderly secret agents forced out of retirement after they?re targeted for elimination, Red 2 is free from lofty expectations. Red was a surprise sleeper hit that earned points from a smart script, fantastic casting, and the novelty of watching Helen Mirren kick ass, take names, and fire off a really BIG gun.?Director Dean Parisot and screenwriters Jon and Erich Hoeber are content to stick with that formula; it?s not as fresh as its progenitor, but?Red 2?somehow manages to skate by ? barely.

This time around, ex-CIA super-agent Frank Moses (Bruce Willis) is keeping a low profile while exploring domestic bliss with girlfriend Sarah (Mary-Louise Parker), a situation she finds stale and boring. Enter Frank?s paranoid ex-partner Marvin (John Malkovich), who pulls the couple into a caper involving an suitcase-sized WMD called ?Nightshade?, unwittingly smuggled into Moscow by Frank and Marvin during a botched Cold War mission.

The trio go on the run, pursued by sadistic special agent Jack Horton (Neal McDonough), vindictive assassin Han (Byung Hun Lee), and Frank?s former MI6 ally Victoria (Mirren, a sexier 60-something super-spy than James Bond could ever hope to be). Our heroes find unlikely allies in shady Russian spymaster Ivan (Brian Cox), the weapon?s mad creator Dr. Edward Bailey (Anthony Hopkins), and Russian femme fatale Katja Petrov (Catherine Zeta-Jones) ? who, much to Sarah?s consternation, is a former flame of Frank?s.

Shoot-outs, fist fights, car chases, ?splosions, and romantic misunderstandings ensue. The story is an unnecessarily busy one that has the group bouncing from D.C. to Paris to London to Moscow and back to London at a pace that would make a travel agent?s head spin, but all that globe-trotting only seems to highlight the thin plot it?s meant to disguise. But this isn?t a National Geographic special, it?s an action flick, and in that sense it delivers in spades, with the appropriate degree of excess.

What makes Red 2 a better-than-average action movie, however, is its cast, even when they arrive late in the tale (Hopkins) or aren?t given much to do (McDonough and Cox); Dame Helen and Malkovich provide equal parts classy and weird, respectively; ?Lee gets the meatiest role in the West to date; Parker pulls of naive-but-sharp quite well, and ?Zeta-Jones providing her with an excellent foil. If there?s anyone who seems out-of-place, it?s Willis. He?s stuck with playing the straight man in the middle of an ensemble of eccentrics, and he seems to be going through the motions much as he did in A Good Day to Die Hard. C?mon Bruce, isn?t retirement supposed to be fun?

Source: http://lakehighlands.advocatemag.com/2013/07/movie-review-red-2/

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Senate Approves Gina McCarthy As EPA Chief Despite Stiff GOP Opposition

The Senate gave grudging approval on Thursday to the key executor of Barack Obama's sweeping new climate change plan, voting to confirm Gina McCarthy as the head of the Environmental Protection Agency.

The 59-40 vote, after a four-month standoff by Republicans, puts McCarthy in direct charge of implementing Obama's strategy of using the agency's powers to reduce greenhouse gas emissions that cause climate change.

The prospect ? centred on plans to cut emissions from existing power plants ? has brought ferocious protests from Republicans and industry associations, and accusations that Obama and the EPA was waging a "war on coal".

"The EPA will play a pivotal role in the execution and implementation of the president's recently announced climate plan," David Vitter, the Louisiana Republican who led the boycott of McCarthy said in a speech on the Senate floor on Thursday. He called the climate plan "dramatic and draconian".

McCarthy spent the last four years at the EPA, as right-hand woman to then-administrator Lisa Jackson, in charge of clean air and climate policy.

That made McCarthy a target for Republicans who oppose curbs on polluters ? despite her 30-year record of working effectively with industry and Democrats as well as Republicans. She worked for Mitt Romney when he was the Massachusetts governor.

"It isn't about her. It's about the fact that they don't like the Environmental Protection Agency," said Democrat Barbara Boxer, who heads the Senate's environment and public works committee.

The standoff on McCarthy's nomination left the agency without an administrator for four months, putting climate rules on hold.

McCarthy's elevation now makes her an even bigger target for Republicans, as Obama bypasses Congress and tasks the EPA with carrying out the work of cutting greenhouse gas emissions.

In the hours before the confirmation vote on Thursday, Republican members of the Senate's environment and public works committee accused McCarthy of serving as Obama's "field general" in the war on coal.

They also accused the agency of over-reaching its authority, and Obama of seeking to exert centralised control over the economy.

"The EPA has been a jobs killer," Vitter said.

Other Republicans on the committee lashed out at Obama for affirming the science underlying climate change. The president in his speech last month offered a summary of recent extreme weather events, such as heat waves, droughts, wildfires and hurricanes.

That was uncalled for, Alabama's Jeff Sessions told the committee ? despite 105F measured temperature in Washington DC. "The president has been misleading the public on this subject," the senator said.

Roger Wicker of Mississippi took issue with Obama for saying last month he had run out of patience for "flat earthers" who deny the science underlying climate change.

"At the very least, I think it's time for some tolerance in the public discourse regarding the many scientific viewpoints on climate change," Wicker complained to the hearing. "Respect should be shown."

With her confirmation, McCarthy will now oversee the ambitious work of writing new regulations to reduce emissions from the country's fleet of coal-fired power plants. Obama has said he wants to see the EPA propose the new rules by next June, with final regulations in place by June 2015.

McCarthy during her confirmation hearings last April called climate change the challenge of a generation. "We must take steps to combat climate change," she said at the time. But she added: "I am convinced that those steps can and must be pursued with common sense."

The coming curbs on power plants are at the heart of Obama's renewed pledge to cut America's emissions by 17% from 2005 levels by the end of the decade. Such plants make up about a third of America's greenhouse gas emissions.

McCarthy, 58, a Massachusetts native with a strong local accent, had earned a reputation over the years for being "tough but fair" with industry.

She will need those allies now as the EPA moves ahead on the president's climate plan.

McCarthy did win the support of a handful of Republican senators, including Lamar Alexander of Tennessee, Susan Collins of Maine, Jeff Flake of Arizona, Kelly Ayotte of New Hampshire, and John McCain of Arizona.

However, Joe Manchin, a Democrat from the coal-heavy state of West Virginia, voted against McCarthy and then took to the Senate floor to deliver a speech on coal's important role in US history. "You can't tell the history of America without telling the history of coal," he said. "And you can't plan an energy future for America without planning for coal."

This article originally appeared on guardian.co.uk

Source: http://www.businessinsider.com/gina-mccarthy-epa-gop-opposition-2013-7

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How Accurate Are Juries?

Prosecutors Hank Goldberg, left, and Marcia Clark stand next to the empty jury box on Sept. 29, 1995, as they listen to Judge Lance Ito warn Clark that she is walking a fine line in her rebuttal closing arguments in the O.J. Simpson murder trial in Los Angeles.

Photo by Eric Draper/AFP/Getty Images

Jurors in the George Zimmerman trial have dominated this week?s news. Juror B37 appeared on CNN with Anderson Cooper, prompting four of the five others to distance themselves from the outspoken juror. The jury sequestration cost Floridians $33,000, which included pedicures, bowling, and admission to the Ripley?s Believe It Or Not! museum. Juries seem like a lot of trouble. How accurate are they?

Ninety percent accurate, at best. Studies suggest that juries reach the correct verdict between 75 and 90 percent of the time. It?s impossible to ascertain whether juries are accurate in individual cases, of course. (If we knew all the facts, we wouldn?t need a jury.) Some legal scholars also insist that the idea of jury error is nonsensical, because guilt or innocence can?t exist independently of a jury verdict. These quasi-metaphysical concerns notwithstanding, the relatively narrow range of estimates that has resulted from decades of research lends some plausibility to the numbers.

The first major study on this question was published in 1966, when University of Chicago law professors Harry Kalven Jr. and Hans Zeisel asked presiding judges to make a note of their own verdicts before the jury ruled. The judge and the jury agreed in approximately 80 percent of criminal cases. A similar study in 2003 found agreement in 77 percent of cases. Although they disagreed with the jury around 20 percent of the time, the judges found the verdict unreasonable in only 9 percent of cases.

Agreement isn?t a guarantee of correctness, of course. The judge and jury could each be wrong more than half of the time, even with a 77 percent agreement rate. To try to reach a better estimate of a jury?s reliability, Northwestern University statistician Bruce Spencer performed a pair of analyses on the existing datasets. First, he assumed that the presiding judge was at least as accurate as the jury. From that admittedly uncertain starting point, Spencer calculated that juries are incorrect in at least 13 percent of cases. (That?s not far from the 9 percent of cases in which judges find a verdict unreasonable.) For his second statistical trick, Spencer generated a mathematical model based on the differential judge and jury conviction rates to determine separately the rates of wrongful convictions and wrongful acquittals. (The model is described on Page 15 of Spencer?s paper.) According to his numbers, juries wrongfully convict in 25 percent of cases.

That doesn?t mean we should abandon the jury system: Spencer estimated that judges wrongfully convicted in 37 percent of cases in his dataset. On the other hand, judges were very unlikely to wrongfully acquit. Spencer?s estimates are extremely controversial, and he admits that his datasets, which are now more than a decade old and drawn from a limited number of jurisdictions, may not be generalizable to the country as a whole.

For an example of how study parameters can affect the results, consider the following statistical quirk. Between 1946 and 1987, criminals tried in federal court were convicted in approximately three-fourths of all cases, regardless of whether they opted for a jury or only a judge. Over the next 15 years, the conviction rate in jury trials jumped 9 percentage points, while the conviction rate in non-jury trials dropped 18 percentage points. Observers suspect that the adoption of federal sentencing guidelines, which took away judges? discretion in sculpting punishment, caused judges to acquit more defendants.

Technical evidence?which was limited in the Zimmerman trial?often flummoxes juries. Jurors interviewed after a 1984 asbestos liability trial, for example, thought anyone exposed to asbestos for a certain period would develop asbestosis, which was contrary to the medical testimony they had just heard. Several of the jurors refused to believe that smoking could have been partially responsible the plaintiffs? breathing difficulties, perhaps because the jurors were themselves smokers. Cases involving pharmaceutical liability and financial malfeasance have also been shown to confuse jurors.

Legal scholars emphasize that there?s more to a criminal trial than finding objective facts. Jurors are called upon to assess a defendant?s mental state, and they sometimes override the law to avoid unjust outcomes. They also diffuse political tension, which would otherwise be focused on a single appointed or elected judge.

Got a question about today?s news? Ask the Explainer.

Explainer thanks Neil Vidmar of the Duke University School of Law and Bruce Spencer of Northwestern University.

Source: http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/explainer/2013/07/zimmerman_trial_how_accurate_are_juries.html

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Is Immigration Reform Dead? Not If Evangelicals Can Do Anything About It (Atlantic Politics Channel)

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Invest in Nature, not infrastructure for storm abatement | Watts Up ...

I suppose maybe they didn?t see this study on how a long forgotten seawall helped save homes in New Jersey.

The best defense against catastrophic storms: Mother Nature, say Stanford researchers

Stanford researchers say that natural habitats such as dunes and reefs are the best protection against storms and rising sea levels along the U.S. coastline.

By Elizabeth Rauer

Natural coastline like this in Rehoboth Bay, Del., can protect homes and cities against storms. Image: NOAA

Extreme weather, sea level rise and degraded coastal systems are placing people and property at greater risk along the coast. Natural habitats such as dunes and reefs are critical to protecting millions of U.S. residents and billions of dollars in property from coastal storms, according to a new study by scientists with the Natural Capital Project at the Stanford Woods Institute for the Environment.

The study, ?Coastal habitats shield people and property from sea-level rise and storms,? published July 14 in the journal Nature Climate Change, offers the first comprehensive map of the entire U.S. coastline that shows where and how much protection communities get from natural habitats such as sand dunes, coral reefs, sea grasses and mangroves. The likelihood and magnitude of losses can be reduced by intact ecosystems near vulnerable coastal communities.

One map shows predicted exposure of the United States coastline and coastal population to sea level rise and storms in the year 2100. An interactive map can be zoomed in on for the West, Gulf or East coasts; Hawaii or Alaska; or the continental United States.

?The natural environment plays a key role in protecting our nation?s coasts,? said study lead author Katie Arkema, a Woods postdoctoral scholar. ?If we lose these defenses, we will either have to have massive investments in engineered defenses or risk greater damage to millions of people and billions in property.?

With the release of the Obama administration?s Climate Action Plan on June 25, there is renewed interest in coastal resilience and climate adaptation planning, as well as in finding natural ways to protect America?s coastline. Billions of dollars will soon be spent on restoration activities in the Gulf of Mexico and the Eastern Seaboard affected by Hurricane Sandy. Leaders can make decisions now to factor natural capital into decisions that could have long-term benefits.

?As a nation, we should be investing in nature to protect our coastal communities,? said Mary Ruckelshaus, managing director of the Natural Capital Project. ?The number of people, poor families, elderly and total value of residential property that are most exposed to hazards can be reduced by half if existing coastal habitats remain fully intact.?

At a moment when many coastal planners are considering their options for dealing with the impacts of sea level rise, the study provides both a national and a localized look at coastal areas where restoration and conservation of natural habitats could make the biggest difference.

?Hardening our shorelines with sea walls and other costly engineering shouldn?t be the default solution,? said Peter Kareiva, the chief scientist at The Nature Conservancy and co-author of the study. ?This study helps us identify those places and opportunities we have to keep nature protecting our coastal communities ? and giving us all the other benefits it can provide, such as recreation, fish nurseries, water filtration and erosion control.?

The Natural Capital Project is a partnership with the Stanford Woods Institute for the Environment, the University of Minnesota?s Institute on the Environment, The Nature Conservancy and the World Wildlife Fund, aimed at aligning economic forces with conservation. The project works to integrate ecosystem services approaches into all major resource decisions that affect Earth?s natural resources.

For more information about the study, visit naturalcapitalproject.org.

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Source: http://wattsupwiththat.com/2013/07/18/invest-in-nature-not-infrastructure-for-storm-abatement/

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Ex-Microsoft Exec Ray Ozzie Joins HP Board of Directors

Ray Ozzie brings expertise in software and the cloud to a company looking to grow its capabilities in those areas.

Hewlett-Packard, whose turnaround efforts include strong pushes in software and the cloud, is including former Microsoft software head Ray Ozzie as one of three new members on its board of directors.
The giant tech vendor announced July 15 that Ozzie, former McDonald?s CEO and current Walgreens Chairman Jim Skinner and ex-Liberty Media CEO Dob Bennett are the newest members of the board, increasing the number of directors from nine to 12. HP executives said they expect to expand the size of the board even more in the future.
HP CEO Meg Whitman, who is overseeing a massive, multiyear turnaround of the company, said she and other executives will continue to rely on the expertise of all board members while trying to get HP back on more solid financial footing.
?As we move forward with our turnaround, it?s a huge benefit to be able to get advice from a board made up of such experienced business and technology leaders,? Whitman said in a statement. ?For their part, Dob, Ray and Jim have just about seen it all during their careers.?

HP?like other established tech vendors such as Dell, Intel and Microsoft?has been hurt by the rapid changes in consumer demand, which has resulted in a steep decline in worldwide PC sales as consumers and business users spend more of their computing dollars on tablets and smartphones. HP officials are still formulating their mobile device strategy. Several years ago HP offered a number of devices running Microsoft?s Windows Mobile operating system, then in 2010 it bought Palm for $1.2 billion, with an eye on Palm?s webOS mobile operating system.

However, in 2011, the company quickly pulled its webOS devices from the market due to lack of customer interest. HP now sells tablets, and over the past several months, Whitman and other executives have said the company will get back into the smartphone space, which will pit it against such companies as Apple and Samsung.
As part of the turnaround, which includes 29,000 job cuts, Whitman also is pushing HP into a number of enterprise-based growth areas, such as the cloud, analytics and business software. ?These are areas where Ozzie could help. Ozzie created Lotus Notes, and in 2006 took over as Microsoft?s chief software architecture, replacing founder Bill Gates. Under his direction, Microsoft embraced the cloud with the development of its Azure computing and development platform.
Currently he is part of the group behind a startup called Talko, which has yet to come out of stealth mode and reportedly is working on mobile communications software.
According to HP, Ozzie will serve on the board of the technology committee as well as the finance and investment committee.
The board itself has been the target of criticism for several years. It helped then-CEO Carly Fiorina in 2002 push through the controversial acquisition of Compaq, and was caught up in a corporate spying scandal in 2006. It has overseen rapid executive turnover?when Whitman (then a board member) was appointed CEO in 2011, she became the third chief executive for the company in a little more than three years.
The board also approved the acquisitions of services vendor EDS for $13.9 billion in 2008 and the $11.3 billion purchase of software maker Autonomy in 2011. Both moves turned out to be costly: In 2012, HP was forced to take an $8 billion charge on the EDS deal, and months later announced an $8.8 billion write-down on the Autonomy acquisition. Some shareholders have sued HP over the Autonomy deal, accusing executives and board members of not listening to warnings about Autonomy?s finances.
In April, HP announced that board member Ray Lane was stepping down as chairman, and two directors left the board. Board member Ralph Whitworth was named interim chairman, and he will remain in that position until a permanent chairman is named.
Among the other two new members, Skinner will join the audit, human resources and compensation, and nominating and governance committees, while Bennett will be part of the finance and investment and audit committees.

Article source: http://www.eweek.com/pc-hardware/ex-microsoft-exec-ray-ozzie-joins-hp-board-of-directors/

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Stocks off as traders look ahead to Fed chief's testimony

stocks

JeeYeon Park CNBC

15 hours ago

Stocks closed lower on Tuesday, with the S&P 500 breaking its 8-day winning streak, following a mixed batch of economic and earnings reports as investors hesitated to jump in a day before Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke's congressional testimony.

The Dow Jones Industrial Average ended 32 points lower at 15, 451.85, dragged down by Coca-Cola and Walt Disney.

The S&P 500 and the Nasdaq snapped their 8-day rallies to close in the red. The CBOE Volatility Index (VIX), widely considered the best gauge of fear in the market, rose above 14.

Most key S&P sectors turned lower, led by energy and utilities.

On the earnings front, Dow component Coca-Cola matched analyst expectations of 63 cents a share in second-quarter profit, but missed on the revenue end with $12.75 billion against expectations of $12.95 billion.

Also, Goldman Sachs was the latest participant in the parade of big U.S. financial institutions to report blowout profits. The company reported earnings per share of $3.70, well ahead of the $2.82 estimates. Revenue also easily beat expectations, sending shares higher.

(Read More:Enjoy it while itlasts: Bank earnings face trouble)

"We know earnings in the second quarter aren't going to be particularly good and we know GDP growth in the second quarter wasn't particularly good, but there's a fair bit of optimism built into the back half of the year and so from our standpoint, we're focused almost entirely on what companies had to say on the second half of the year and what that means for stock prices," said Dan Greenhaus, chief global strategist at BTIG.

Investors will be looking ahead to Federal Reserve Chairman chief Bernanke's semi-annual testimony to Congress on Wednesday, from which they hope to garner further clues on the direction of monetary stimulus. Markets jumped last week when he said the central bank was inclined to keep its policies in place for some time

"In recent weeks the message that he's given is that we have seen signs of improvements in the U.S. economy and we're going to move towards tapering. Then he gives us the message that we got last week, so I think markets will be cautious ahead of Bernanke's testimony," said Robert Rennie, global head of currency strategy at Westpac.

Meanwhile, Kansas City Fed President Esther George said the central bank should begin to reduce its massive bond-buying program and bring it to a close "sometime in the first half of next year."

On the economic front, homebuilder confidence jumped in July to its strongest level since January 2006, according to the National Association of Home Builders. The NAHB/Wells Fargo Housing Market index rose to 57 from a revised 51 in June. Analysts polled by Reuters had projected the index likely held at its originally reported June level of 52.

Consumer price index gained 0.5 percent in June thanks to a gain in gasoline prices. Economists polled by Reuters had expected consumer inflation to increase 0.3 percent last month. Excluding food and energy costs, the core reading edged up 0.2 percent.

And industrial production edged up 0.3 percent in June after an unchanged reading in May, according to the Federal Reserve. Economists polled by Reuters had expected a gain of 0.2 percent.

Elsewhere, Japan's benchmark index hit a new seven-week high and as earnings season picked up.

The Nikkei 225 hit its highest levels since May 24, and the yen weakened to the 100 handle against the U.S. dollar, after Japan's economics minister, Akira Amari, said the government will go ahead with a planned sales tax hike.

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