Sunday, March 13, 2011

Renee Zellweger says she never planned to be famous

Oscar-winning actress Renee Zellweger has revealed that she never planned to become famous.

The ‘Bridget Jones’s Diary’ star started her career out small.

Among her first roles included appearing in a beer commercial in her home state of Texas and her starring in horror sequel ‘The Return of Texas Chainsaw Massacre’.

“I have never had those thoughts before,” People Magazine quoted Zellweger as saying at the Texas Film Hall of Fame Awards Ceremony.

“I moved to L.A. because I just ran out of things to do. If Austin Studios had been here at the time, I might not have gone anywhere,” she said.

Zellweger – who was born and raised in Katy, Texas, and attended the University of Texas in Austin- was part of Richard Linklater’s Dazed and Confused cast early in her career.

“I felt really lucky to be a glorified extra on [Dazed and Confused],” Zellweger said.

“I learned so much about how a film set works and how it breaks down into different departments and what your responsibilities are as a performer when you are participating in a collaborative effort,” the actress added.

Saturday, March 12, 2011

Avert ‘Three Mile Island’

Japanese officials battling to prevent a meltdown at a nuclear power station after Friday’s record earthquake are using seawater to try and cool a reactor and prevent damage to the chamber holding its radioactive core.

An explosion at Tokyo Electric Power Co.’s Fukushima Dai- Ichi nuclear power station yesterday destroyed the walls of its No. 1 reactor building and injured four people. A hydrogen leak caused the blast, which didn’t damage the steel chamber, Chief Cabinet Secretary Yukio Edano said at a briefing yesterday.

Asia’s biggest utility “has decided to fill the containment with seawater,” Edano said. Japan’s Nuclear Safety Agency couldn’t confirm a meltdown at the plant and monitoring around the reactor is showing that radiation is falling, spokesman Shinji Kinjyo said today.

Lack of adequate cooling for a reactor may cause a core meltdown, the most dangerous kind of nuclear power accident, releasing massive amounts of radiation, according to the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission. The 1979 accident at the Three Mile Island reactor in Pennsylvania resulted in a partial meltdown, without a breach in the containment building, according to the commission.

“This case is quite difficult, it would be closer to what happened in 1979 at Three Mile Island,” Rafael Arutyunyan, first deputy director of Institute for Safety of Nuclear Energy, Russian Academy of Sciences, said on Russian television. “Only a small amount of active particles made it outside and were released into the atmosphere, so there were no consequences for the population. That’s the way we’re heading at the moment.”

Fuel Rods

Fuel rods at the reactor may be melting after radioactive Cesium material left by atomic fission was detected near the site, Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency spokesman Yuji Kakizaki said yesterday.

“If the fuel rods are melting and this continues, a reactor meltdown is possible,” Kakizaki said. A meltdown refers to a heat buildup in the core of such intensity it melts the floor of the reactor containment housing.

Thousands were evacuated as workers vented radioactive gas from the plant in Fukushima, 220 kilometers (140 miles) north of Tokyo, and three people were hospitalized after being exposed to radiation. The death toll from a tsunami that swept over the northern coastline after the quake topped 600 and an estimated 4,000 were stranded in evacuation centers.

The 8.9 magnitude temblor forced Toyota Motor Corp. to shut some plants, shut down oil refineries and sparked a plunge in stocks. While the Finance Ministry said it’s too soon to gauge the quake’s economic impact, the Nikkei 225 Stock Average dropped 1.7 percent March 11.

Fukushima Dai-Ichi

The reactor at the Fukushima Dai-Ichi plant may remain shut for a year, Seth Grae, chief executive officer of Lightbridge Corp., a nuclear energy consulting firm whose staff previously inspected the Fukushima plant, said March 11 in an interview with Pimm Fox on Bloomberg Television’s “Taking Stock.”

“If they do lose several of those plants for a few months it could have a significant effect on Japan’s economy,” he said. “A trickle down could hit factories, slowing down Japan’s production.”

Tokyo Electric took almost two years to restart power generation at the Kashiwazaki Kariwa nuclear plant in the country’s northwest after a 6.8 magnitude temblor on July 16, 2007, caused a fire and radiation leaks at the world’s biggest atomic energy station.

Japanese Reactors

Nuclear energy provides almost 30 percent of Japan’s electricity, with total capacity of about 47,000 megawatts, with plans to increase that to 40 percent by 2017, according to the World Nuclear Association. The nation’s first reactor began operating in 1966 and there are 54 reactors in the country. A nuclear plant traditionally operates as many as 8 reactors.

Japan’s nuclear companies have been in talks to sell technology abroad, while Toshiba Corp. controls Westinghouse Electric Co., a U.S. maker of light-water nuclear reactors, which also has orders from China. Toshiba is bidding to build Turkey’s second nuclear power plant. A Japanese group in October also won a contract to build a nuclear plant in Vietnam.

Tokyo Electric started releasing radioactive gas and steam into the atmosphere about 9 a.m. local time yesterday to reduce pressure in the containment housing of the No. 1 reactor, company spokesman Akitsuka Kobayashi said. The utility has also started preparing to vent gas from containment areas of four reactors at the nearby Fukushima Dai-Ni nuclear plant, he said yesterday.

Evacuation Zone

Winds in the area of the Fukushima plant are blowing at less than 18 kilometers per hour mostly in an offshore direction, according to a 4 p.m. update from the Japan Meteorological Agency yesterday.

The government widened the evacuation zone around the damaged reactor to 20 kilometers from 10 kilometers, affecting thousands of people.

“When the pressure starts building up, the emergency procedure is to start venting,” Dave Lochbaum, director of the nuclear safety project at the Union for Concerned Scientists, said in a telephone interview. “They’ve essentially entered a beat the clock game. As long as there is no fuel damage, there will be radioactivity, but it will be very low.”

The plant’s operators need to connect to the electricity grid, fix emergency diesel generators or bring in more batteries to power a backup system that pumps the water needed to cool the reactor, said Lochbaum, a nuclear engineer who has worked at nuclear power plants for 17 years.

Terror Threat To Veena Malik?

Thursday, March 10, 2011

Nokia to launch E7 in India shortly

New Delhi: Renowned mobile manufacturing company Nokia has already started taking pre-orders of the Nokia E7, which will be launched in India shortly.

This handset will be available in the Indian market at a price tag of Rs 35,000. Customers who are looking forward to experience this handset can do so in their nearest Nokia priority stores from March 8 onwards.

They can also preorder this Symbian smartphone online through Nokia website by filling in a simple form.

The Nokia E7 will be equipped with manifold features and specifications such as 4” AMOLED screen, 8MP camera with dual LED flash, a slide out QWERTY keypad, 16GB of internal storage and 720p recording.

Buzz in the air that Nokia has joined hands with Microsoft to launch Windows phone 7 based smartphones.

Vishwa Kannada Sammelana Belgaum

What is the essence of the Vishwa Kannada Sammelan? As Belgaum city prepares to host the three-day cultural festival from Friday, there is a need to reflect on the need for such an event and its possible outcomes.
“I think it is to celebrate Kannadatana, or Kannadatva, or all that is associated with being a Kannadiga,” says Chiranjeev Singh, retired additional chief secretary, who is considered the architect of the first Vishwa Kannada Sammelan in Mysore in 1985. “Just like there is something called Indianness or Panjabiyat, there is Kannadatana. It is a wonderful bundle of history, cultural heritage, art, literature, music and socio-economic progress. It is a mixture of emotion and understanding about our identity. It expands my understanding of the meaning of the Kannada-speaking world, which is not limited by geographical boundaries or time,” Mr. Singh said.
Event of fun
Acclaimed film director Girish Kasaravalli calls it an event of fun and joy. “Holding such an event should definitely contribute to shaping our identity as a linguistic and cultural group. The feeling that we are all one will be strengthened. I don’t expect anything creative to come out of it. But then, I surely regard it as a celebration for all those whose lives are touched by the language or culture of this State. It should lead to harmony and love among all of us,” Mr. Kasaravalli said.
Full of joy
The Sammelan is to remind ourselves that life is not as bland as we think it to be, says national award winning sculptor Manayya Badiger. “Life is full of joy and colour. We need to pause and celebrate life. The Sammelan will help us in this,” he said.
Theatre and cine personality Mandya Ramesh feels the Sammelan will help foster a common identity of the people who reside in the State and those who stay outside, but are connected to Kannada in some way.
“In these days of changing culture and language, we need a wholesome cultural identity. The Sammelan will help in this. Organising the Sammelan in Belgaum is all the more important as it makes people in the border areas feel that they belong to the mainstream,” he said.
“I am happy that the government is organising a Vishwa Kannada Sammelan. But I would be happier if the government spent as much money and energy on issues faced by people in neglected border taluks affected by poverty, illiteracy and lack of development,” says pro-Kannada agitator Shivasharnappa Wali.
No expectations

Adam Lambert To Return to 'American Idol'

All season long on "American Idol,' top ten finalist James Durbin has had to endure comparisons to season eight runner-up Adam Lambert. This week, he'll get to make those comparisons himself.

Lambert will return to the Idol stage Thursday evening (March 10) to perform an acoustic version of "Aftermath," according to the singer's personal Twitter page. Immediately following the show, the song will be made available exclusively on Lambert's website, with all proceeds from the sale going to The Trevor Project, an organization which offers support for and aims to prevent suicide by lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgendered teens.

"In order to fully benefit the Trevor Project, the remix will only be available on my site. [But it will also] be on iTunes eventually," the 29-year-old singer tweeted.

The release will mark the first time that "Aftermath" is available as a single in the United States, and the fourth single overall from Lambert's 2009 album "For Your Entertainment," following the record's title track, "Whataya Want from Me" and "If I Had You."

"[Aftermath] was written about finding the courage to be honest with yourself and the people who love you," Lambert said in a statement. "It's about facing adversity and taking risks in the name of personal liberation. The song takes on different meanings to different listeners."

While "Idol" looks back with Lambert, the openly gay singer continues looking forward, hard at work on his next album, he told MTV News.

"I'm in talks, so it's all kind of being conceptualized right now, and what we're hoping for is maybe by the fall," Lambert said of his sophomore effort. "So, I'm going to take my time and really write the most personal songs, the most powerful songs. I really want it to be something that's really honest and real."

Kate puffs, critics huff

Supermodel Kate Moss lit up the runway, quite literally, at the Paris Fashion Week on Wednesday as she strutted along the catwalk smoking a cigarette. Moss, 37, made an appearance for designer Marc Jacob’s Louis Vuitton show that saw her and Naomi Campbell, 40, join 70 other models in a mock-hotel se
t. Clad in tight hot-pants, a black jacket with fur sleeves, bondage style lace-up boots and leather gloves, Moss’s smoking act was seen as an open defiance of the French Government’s ban on indoor smoking.

The model, who is rumoured to smoke 100 cigarettes a day, looked pale and came under flak for setting a bad example. “Paris officials will undoubtedly have reservations about Kate’s ciggie stunt. In fact, it has probably left them fuming,” writes Simon Boyle for Daily Mirror. “Moss looked nervous, as you do when you haven’t been on a catwalk much for a decade,” writes Lisa Armstrong for The Times, Australia.

She adds, “But then she lit a cigarette and one section of the audience applauded as if she’d discovered the cure, rather than the cause, of cancer, so presumably she felt right back at home.” Moss recently got engaged to rocker Jamie Hince and is set to wed on July 2 this year.