US Commends President Goodluck Jonathan

*Says he has consolidated grip on power

*Believes Yar’Adua’s men won’t engineer political come back

Acting President Goodluck Jonathan’s consolidation of his grip on power is drawing applause from the United States of America which says his efforts are easing a political crisis that once fanned fears of instability in the country.

Assistant Secretary of State Johnnie Carson said Washington was encouraged that Jonathan was moving on electoral reforms, anti-corruption efforts and peace outreach in the restive Niger Delta, the centre of Nigeria’s largest energy industry.

“I think he’s done a very good job of consolidating his authority and reassuring all segments of the community,” Carson, the Obama administration’s top diplomat for Africa, told Reuters in an interview.

Jonathan assumed power in early February to try to end government paralysis in the absence of President Umaru Yar’Adua, who had been in Saudi Arabia receiving treatment for a heart condition for more than two months.

Yar’Adua subsequently returned but remains too sick to govern and is essentially incommunicado – a situation that led U.S. officials to express concern over a potential power struggle among different leadership factions.

Carson said those fears had receded as Jonathan cemented his authority, including taking steps to name a new Cabinet, and that it was unlikely those who back Yar’Adua would try to engineer a political comeback.

“We don’t know whether he will come back. But I think the country is in fact moving on,” Carson said. “We believe those in power in senior positions have clearly opted to support a stable democracy during this period of uncertainty.”

U.S. officials have urged Jonathan to speed preparations for elections due in 2011, saying a repeat of the vote-rigging and intimidation that marred the 2007 vote that brought Yar’Adua to power would be disastrous.

Nigeria’s ruling party has said it wants the next president to be a northerner, in line with a principle that power rotates around the country, effectively ruling Jonathan out of another term.

Carson said the United States supported the rotation principle as a guarantor of stability in Nigeria.
“We hope that the political balance which has given Nigeria its political stability will prevail,” he said
Source: Vanguardngr.com

Hollywood and Bollywood join arms to fight piracy

Hollywood and Bollywood linked arms Thursday to fight piracy, with the announcement of a coalition among the Motion Picture Association of America and seven Indian companies to tackle counterfeiting in one of the world's largest film markets.

 

The alliance comes as Hollywood tries to tap global markets more aggressively and as Indian movie studios grow in size and stature — narrowing the gap between Indian and U.S. filmmakers, who have not always seen eye-to-eye on intellectual property issues.

A year in the making, the coalition to fight film piracy in India will work with movie theaters to crack down on camcorder piracy — the source of 90 percent of all pirated DVDs — with police to tighten enforcement, with Internet service providers to fight Internet piracy and with politicians to create more effective laws.

MPAA, which has similar anti-piracy alliances in the U.S., Europe and Hong Kong, would not disclose the size of the coalition's budget but said funding would come from members.

The Indian film industry has a rich history of copycat productions and traditionally has had less respect for the sanctity of intellectual property than Hollywood would like.

In 2008, for example, Warner Bros. unsuccessfully sued to block the release of an Indian Punjabi film called "Hari Puttar — A Comedy of Terrors" on the grounds that the name was too close to its Harry Potter series.

That friction has started to ease with the rise of corporate studios in India, like UTV Motion Pictures and Reliance Big Pictures, which last year took a 50 percent share in Steven Spielberg's DreamWorks for $325 million.

Over the last two years, a growing number of successful partnerships — like "My Name is Khan," produced by two Indian companies and distributed by Fox in India and the U.S. — as well as successful crossover movies — like "Slumdog Millionaire" and "Avatar," which both did well in India — have also strengthened ties.

"People are becoming more of the same mind," Dan Glickman, the outgoing chairman of the Motion Picture Association of America, told The Associated Press in an interview. "The Indian film industry now understands their product is getting stolen at significant rates."

Piracy cost India's $2.3 billion film industry $959 million and 571,000 jobs in 2008, according to an Ernst & Young study, and pirated DVDs account for 60 percent of the market, according to KPMG.

"Piracy is one of the most pernicious problems facing the entertainment industry, and the Indian industry in particular," said Reliance Big Pictures chief executive Sanjeev Lamba.

Lamba attributed part of the financial success of "3 Idiots," distributed by Reliance Big Pictures last year, to the studio's aggressive anti-piracy efforts.

Round-the-clock work helped prevent 10 million illegal downloads, he said, adding that at one point his staff was finding new illegal digital copies of the film on the Internet every five minutes.

Piracy has gotten worse in India as Internet connection speeds have improved and DVD player usage has increased.

In the last two years, the number of Indian households with DVD players surged from 4 million to 45 million, said Harish Dayani, chief executive of India's Moser Baer, the world's second-largest CD and DVD manufacturer.

He estimates that Indian consumers snap up 700 million illegal DVDs every year, giving them little incentive to go to theaters and generating 15 billion rupees ($330 million) for counterfeiters.

Reducing that leakage is crucial for Hollywood studios as they try to push into India.

"More and more, the growth of film is outside the U.S.," Glickman said. "Hollywood is now looking at the world as their marketplace."

KPMG expects Indian film industry revenues to hit 136.7 billion rupees ($3 billion) by 2014, an average annual growth of 8.9 percent.

"This is a country of 1 billion people who love movies more than anywhere else in the world," Glickman said. "We'd be foolish not to want to come into this market."

Jaden Smith features in "New Karate Kid"

Will and Jada Pinkett Smith's family is getting crowded with action heroes now that their 12-year-old son, Jaden, is beating up on bad guys.

Jaden Smith stars in the title role of "The Karate Kid," a remake of the 1984 hit in which he plays an American youth in China who gets a crash course in martial arts from a maintenance man (Jackie Chan) so he can defend himself against a band of bullies.

The movie, due in theaters June 11, screened Wednesday for theater owners attending their annual ShoWest convention, where Smith received an award as breakthrough male star of the year.

"I'm very excited about getting awards already. It's crazy," Smith said in an interview.

Smith said his father, whose action flicks include "Hancock," "I Am Legend," "Independence Day" and the "Men in Black" and "Bad Boys" movies, was a fan of the original "Karate Kid" and thought Jaden, who already had studied karate, would be the right guy for the role.

"My dad had the idea of remaking it," Jaden Smith said. "He's the one who was like, `We need to make this movie.'"

Jaden Smith got his big-screen start alongside his dad in the 2006 drama "The Pursuit of Happyness" and co-starred in the science-fiction remake "The Day the Earth Stood Still." He said he wants to make acting a lifelong career and take a page from his father's book with more action roles.

Will and Jada Pinkett Smith were producers on "The Karate Kid," along with Jerry Weintraub, who produced the original and its sequels.

"It's very scary when you go back and fiddle around with a classic," Will Smith told the ShoWest audience before the screening.

Weintraub said he "questioned it 150,000 times" but was glad Smith talked him into doing the remake.

Directed by Harald Zwart ("Agent Cody Banks," "The Pink Panther 2"), the new "Karate Kid" stars Jaden Smith as Dre Parker, who reluctantly moves with his widowed mom (Taraji P. Henson) to China.

The quiet, reclusive Mr. Han (Chan) saves Dre from a beating at the hands of a gang of young kung fu hotshots. Han turns out to be a kung fu wizard himself and agrees to train the boy for a tournament showdown with his tormentors.

A more appropriate title would be "The Kung Fu Kid." Jaden Smith said the filmmakers kept the original title out of respect for their source material and because "The Karate Kid" has such name recognition among audiences.

For all the movie's bone-crunching action, Smith said his biggest injury came in a quiet moment as Dre meets Mei Ying, the Chinese classmate he falls for.

"The worst I got hurt was in a dialogue scene," Smith said. "I actually was just walking up to Mei Ying, it's the first time I ever see her, and boom, my knee was just killing me. I was like, what the heck, you know? I had to ice it and everything."

What kung fu advice did martial-arts master Chan have for his young co-star?

"Stay fast," Smith said, "and stay focused."

more news about Black Celebrities

Jesse James vs Michelle "Bombshell" McGee

Earlier this week Sandra Bullock left her home aparently due to an alledged sexual affair between her husband Jesse James and Michelle McGee. McGee is a tattoo model from San Diego who declared that she has been involved in an affair with Jesse James for several months. Of course James denied and considered all the declarations as lies but still he appologised to his family for a poor judgement. It looks like Sandra did not believe entirely his denial of the affair and decided to leave for a while if not forever. Michelle McGee seems to be a person not having a very nice background regarding the fact that she is connected to adult videos and profiles. The only thing which is clear stays on the fact the she reflects the image of a person who likes partying and entertaining. The education of Michelle McGee, 24, is based on a biology bachelor's degree and a two-year medical school. Apparently the contact with the medical staff makes her hot according to one of her statements: "Now, I especially love to have affairs with doctors. Their medical talk makes me hot. I love to be challenged, and I love to put know-it-all doctors in their place."

Check out more Celebrity Gossips

My romance with Dbanj is a private affair - Genevieve Nnaji

Genevieve Nnaji "I can only say that I would like to keep my private life private and I really don't have anything to say"But if one part of a couple reveals that he is going out with someone as high profile as yourself, it makes the story credible if you can actually confirm this...Genevieve "Dbanj is an adult and he has said something. Let's just leave it at that..."

But can you clarify the whole thing by simply conforming or denying it?

Genevieve "I don't want to talk about my private life. I don't do it. I am well aware that people will say things. people have been calling me to find things out, but I am not going to say anything. I have learnt over the years that no matter what I say, people will say and believe what they like...you can not please everybody. This is my own way of handling things. I just don't talk about my private life. It's the one thing I can control"

But is it real or a publicity stunt? Is Dbanj lying?



Genevieve "Does he lie?"



By that are you inferring that he wasn't telling a lie and what he said is true.Genevieve "I am not inferring or insinuating anything. One person has said something and that really is enough. I am not saying I will never talk about it, but for now I do not wish to say anything about the matter."

***

Source: Linda Ikeji