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  • Latin American Drug Traffickers May Use Submarines To Move Drugs Across The Atlantic

    Latin American cocaine traffickers may be using submarines to move the Europe-bound drugs across the Atlantic Ocean, a top official said Monday during a conference aimed at stemming the flow of the drugs through Africa.
    Alexandre Schmidt, the head of the West African branch of the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, said drug cartels are known to have already used submarines off the South American and Caribbean coast. Even though no submarines have been seized in West African waters, there is anecdotal evidence to suggest they are in use there as well, he said.
    "We are not talking about military vessels here, but rather smaller ones which can be bought freely on the international market by anybody who has a couple of million dollars to spare," said Schmidt, who spoke during the inaugural session of a policy committee, dubbed the West Africa Coast Initiative.
    The initiative was launched in 2009, after a United Nations report showed that the illicit flow of cocaine through the region boomed, surpassing even the GDP of some of the countries through which the drugs were trafficked.
    West Africa became a stopover point for drug cartels after demand began to wane in North America at the same time prices soared in Europe, prompting the traffickers to shift their operation.
    Due to tightened airport and maritime controls in Europe, the traffickers needed to find a halfway point. Experts say that the drugs were first brought to West Africa in small boats, then twin-engine planes. They landed on deserted islands and abandoned runways, before being parceled out to be carried north.
    The cartels took advantage of corrupt institutions and lax law-enforcement, and in some countries they operated with the complicity of ruling families.
    The trade evolved with the use of cargo planes, first discovered in November 2009 when a Boeing 727 landed in the Malian desert, miles from the nearest town or commercial airport. When authorities arrived, the aircraft had already been set alight, prompting authorities to speculate that it was being used to carry cocaine.

    'Glee' Original Cast Graduating, Ryan Murphy Says

    Here's the one drawback with TV series about kids: they grow up.
    Unless a showrunner can suspend the laws of time and begin writing seasons that address just days or weeks, they eventually face a decision as to how they'll adapt their shows to older stars. Will they follow them from high school to new stages in life? Or bring in new characters? Perhaps both?
    According to "Glee" showrunner Ryan Murphy, he's leaning toward doing the latter.
    He confirmed to Ryan Seacrest that he's looking to move the current cast on from high school, with them graduating at the end of the third season, and bringing in fresh talent to the show -- which is the entire function of the new Oxygen Network show, "The Glee Project."
    "That is true. I don't think of it in terms of eliminating or replacing. Because I think the thing about this cast is people love them and they are incredibly talented. They've left sort of an indelible mark," Murphy told Seacrest on his radio show. "The thing that I wanted to do and the cast wanted to do, we didn't want to have a show where they were in high school for 8 years. We really wanted it to be true to that experience. We thought it would be really cool if we were true to the timeline."
    That would mean seeing Lea Michele's Rachel Berry, the show's leading character, graduate, amongst many others. Murphy said that, with two adults to rely on, he's confident of being able to make new stars.
    "We've got Matt Morrison and Jane Lynch who will stay and be the male and female lynchpins of the series, but I think the fun thing about the show is it's a celebration of youth and talent and I think that just like with the original cast, I think finding those young unknown people and giving them an opportunity to break into the business and become stars is a really fun and exciting thing and is the spirit of the series."

    Rosie Huntington-Whiteley Talks Shia LaBeouf's 'Transformers' Warning In Women's Health

    It has become quite obvious, now, that one must watch his or her words when starring in a "Transformers" movies, especially when the desire to draw vile dictators into conversation grows strong. See: Fox, Megan, and her Steven Spielberg-mandated firing.

    But as her "Transformers: Dark of the Moon," replacement, Rosie Huntington-Whiteley, soon learned, there's more than just verbal traps to be avoided while filming one of Michael Bay's blow-em-up blockbusters. The warning came from her on-screen love interest, series star, Shia LaBeouf.

    “Shia made it clear this wasn’t just about becoming a movie star. The shooting schedule was going to be grueling," Huntington-Whiteley told Women's Health Magazine, which she covers this month. And she confirmed that her co-star was right; their shoot in Chicago was anything but easy. “You’re in the sun all day long—dirty and smelly. It was like boot camp.”

    While moviegoers may note the differences between Fox and Huntington-Whiteley, such as their looks and accents, she promises that the issue that got Fox canned from the series is not at all a problem for her. Even if people think it might be.

    “People always tell me, ‘Gosh, you’re so nice!' Like they expect me to be a huge b*tch," she muses. Well, maybe after the last "Transformers" leading lady...

    She also talks about her love for organic food, something she's shared in the past.

    “Thinking about the things that go into processed foods—chemicals, additives," she said. "Sometimes you go into a supermarket and the apples are all the same size and color, but that’s not what apples are supposed to look like. Go to an orchard or an organic farm, and the apples are sometimes knobby, but they taste better.”

    TAKASHI MURAKAMI at Gagosian Gallery Britannia Street

    TAKASHI MURAKAMI 3-Meter Girl, 2011 © Takashi Murakami/Kaikai Kiki Co., Ltd. All Rights Reserved. Prototype of work to be exhibited: modeling by BOME, original rendering by Seiji Matsuyama.
    June 27th – August 5th, 2011
    I think the Japanese male sexual complex originated in the two-dimensional world –animation, games and so on – which then transferred to small three-dimensional sculptures. But before my sculptures Miss Ko (1997) and My Lonesome Cowboy (1998), it had never been represented life-size.
    –Takashi Murakami
    Gagosian Gallery will be presenting recent paintings and sculptures by Takashi Murakami.
    Murakami’s latest group of paintings explores his complex ambivalence to the legacy of cosmopolitan painter Kuroda Seiki, who brought yōga or Western-style painting to Meiji- period Japan. Kuroda broadly promoted the genre of history painting, as well as the validity of the nude figure as a subject for art.
    Taking Kuroda’s famous triptych, Wisdom, Impression, Sentiment (c.1900), Murakami consciously reclaims it in a new iteration by applying traditional nihonga techniques like gold- and silver-leafing, as well as recasting the realistically rendered nude figures in contemporary manga style.
    When it was first shown, Kuroda’s work caused great controversy because of its content, however, as Murakami reminds in paintings such as Shunga: Gibbons
    (2010) and Shunga: Bow Wow (2010), Japan had embraced explicit erotic content in art as early as the twelfth century.
    By the Edo period, the long-established genre of shunga sought to express a varied world of contemporary sexual possibilities, often referred to as the creation of a “pornotopia,” an idealised, eroticised and fantastical world parallel to contemporary urban life. In Murakami’s contemporary shunga, graphic depictions of exaggerated and engorged male and female genitals are set against delirious backgrounds of image and pattern.
    This theme continues into sculptures, which feature collaborations with key artists working in Japan’s popular otaku culture including Seiji Matsuyama — creator of the controversial manga “My Wife is an Elementary School Student” – and BOME, a figure sculptor who previously collaborated on Murakami’s first life-size sculpture, Miss Ko2 (1997), an ebullient Playboy fantasy translated into manga cuteness and proportions. Whereas Nurse Ko2 (2011) relates closely to the earlier sculpture, with its leggy, busty verticality and sexy uniform (right down to a suggestively loaded syringe), 3-Meter Girl (2011) is an absurdist composition that pushes form and content to new extremes. She stands with feet spread wide, her abundant hair roiling around her like an elaborate rococo frame as if to steady her petite body against the whopping pendular breasts whose size and weight threaten to topple her.
    A monumental cast and highly polished metal penis of towering proportions, Mr Big Mushroom (2011), is a realist, manmade take on the traditional stone lingam. Together with Miss Clam (2011), an inviting metal vagina, it provides an exclamation mark to the enduring obsession with sexuality in contemporary human society.
    www.gagosian.com/

    Katie Holmes In A Bikini With Suri photo

    Katie Holmes and Suri Cruise enjoyed some beach time in Miami over the weekend, and Bauer Griffin has the photos. On Sunday they were snapped with Tom celebrating Father's Day on a boat.
    The family is in Miami while Tom films 'Rock of Ages.'
    Here's one pic of Katie and Suri in the ocean, see the rest here

    Heidi Montag In A Bikini After 27-Pound Weight Loss

    Eyes up here, boys! Heidi Montag has never been shy about showing off her assets and partied in Las Vegas this weekend in a skimpy two-piece pink bikini.
    Read the whole story: Celebuzz

    Mitch Winehouse Reignites Music Career, Remembers Daughter Amy as a Child

    Like countless other musicians, Mitch Winehouse gave up his dream in favor of getting a steady job to support his family. He was a professional singer in the '70s, but left the circuit to work as a cab driver and raise his children.

    "I put it on the back burner," he tells Spinner. "When Amy started to perform she'd get me up on stage and we'd do a couple of songs."

    Amy, of course, is his daughter Amy Winehouse, who captivated the world with her sultry voice and littered tabloids with her personal foibles. Now the family is forging ahead and Mitch is singing his own tune.

    "The whole idea with the album was I would stand up and be judged by my own work," Mitch says. "The songs would be standards, but not standards that everybody immediately recognizes."

    'Rush of Love' includes covers of tunes of jazz and lounge tunes like 'How Insensitive' by Antonio Carlos Jobim. There are also four new songs penned by veteran British songwriter Tony Hiller.

    As for Amy, an album is in the works. And, according to dad, she is doing just fine.

    "She doing better now," Mitch says. "She has been clean for two and a half years, about that. I'm not saying her problems have gone away, because they haven't. She's dealing with it."

    Mitch doesn't take credit for teaching his daughter how to sing, but the family certainly provided her with a musical upbringing.

    "In my house there was always music, there was dancing, and singing," Mitch says. "And it was natural for my kids to sing as soon as they could talk. I remember Amy standing on the table and I would leave a word out of a song and she would fill the word in."

    But if Mitch Winehouse is using the spotlight to pursue his own ventures, it's not only for the singing. The 61-year-old year old cab driver also appeared in a documentary that explored the government's role in the dealing with drug addiction, and even testified before a Parliamentary committee to discuss the discrepancies.

    "If somebody is a drug user in London, and they voluntarily want to come off drugs but they can't afford to put themselves in a private clinic, it's almost impossible for them to get into a residential program," Mitch says. "What we found was that there are some people that are so desperate that want to get off drugs but can't get the help. We found a lot of people are actually turning to crime."

    Amy Winehouse Booed After 'Disaster' Performance

    Amy Winehouse was booed and jeered during a concert in Serbia's capital as she stumbled onto the stage, mumbled through her songs and wandered off.
    Serbian media described the concert late Saturday kicking off her European tour before about 20,000 fans as a "scandal" and a "disaster." The Blic daily said the concert was "the worst in the history of Belgrade."
    Winehouse, who has publicly struggled with drugs and alcohol, was almost an hour late, before stumbling to the stage and appearing unable to remember the lyrics to her songs. She dropped the microphone and occasionally disappeared, with her band playing instead.
    The crowd at Belgrade's fortress could hardly tell which song Winehouse was singing and responded angrily. Many walked out in disappointment.
    "It was horrible," said Ivana Bilic, a fan. "She should have canceled the whole thing, rather than appear at all like this."
    The Daily Blic posted a clip from the concert on its website, commenting, "Listen if you dare."
    Tickets cost about euro40 ($57) – very expensive in the country where average salaries are about euro300 ($428) a month.
    Winehouse recently spent a week at a rehab program in London. Her breakthrough album "Back to Black" from 2006 won five Grammy Awards, but her music in recent years has been overshadowed by drug use and run-ins with the law.

    Christina Hendricks: Joan Holloway Wasn't Supposed To Be Sexy

    It is the pointed and tightly wound, can't-miss-a-word dialogue and slow-burning-til-massive-explosion story lines that set up "Mad Men" to be a perennial award winner, but it is without question that is its actors, with their nuanced performances and emotional journeys, that make the show such a hit.
    While Jon Hamm's Don Draper is the undisputed lead, the troubled and mysterious ad man with a dark past and present day jawline that delivers as many messages as his mouth, the show relies almost as much on its female scene-stealer, Joan Holloway, played by the irreplaceable Christina Hendricks.
    It's her early 60s charm -- she seems to bow down to the ludicrous male-female paradigm and inequitable power structure of the era, while actually turning it on its ear to run the office and sometimes, the personal lives of its inhabitants -- that make her performance so powerful, but there's no mistaking that her body, matching the curvy ideals of the times, stands out as its own sort of character.
    Hendricks, a long-time working actress with roles in shows such as "Firefly" and "Kevin Hill," won the pre-written role based on her acting skills, but the sexy factor inherent in Holloway was something she brought to the character in large part on her own.
    "When we did the pilot, that was not something that we discussed as a trait for Joan," she told Parade Magazine. "This is something that's developed as a combination of the costuming on the show, the hair and makeup, my portrayal of the role, and [showrunner] Matt's [Weiner] writing. It all kind of came together and that became much more of a focus later. It was just something the audience brought attention to."
    Now, with that mix of textured acting skill and knockout looks, Hendricks' career is truly taking off. She co-stars alongside Sarah Jessica Parker in the upcoming comedy, "I Don't Know How She Does It," playing a working woman in New York City -- but in 2011, not 1964.
    ""I play Sarah Jessica's best friend and partner in crime. We're sort of these harried, rushed business women and I'm there commiserating with her on the side," Hendricks said of the film. "We're trying to be perfect mothers and perfect business women and perfect wives. It is a dream to work with Sarah Jessica Parker. She's everything you want her to be: She's incredibly smart and talented and gracious and very giving as an actress. I just absolutely adore her."

    Robert Ross, Music Producer, Claims He Was Kidnapped Due To Shaquille O'Neal Sex Tape

    A Los Angeles music producer testified that gang members kidnapped him in 2008 and told him the reason was an "issue" with Shaquille O'Neal and his business partner, according to transcripts from a preliminary criminal hearing.
    In the transcripts, producer Robert Ross – who has claimed the attack came because he said he had a sex tape featuring O'Neal – testified that his kidnappers beat him and demanded a "videotape."
    Excerpts from the Monday preliminary hearing for seven gang members accusing of kidnapping, robbery, assault and conspiracy in the attack on Ross appeared early Sunday on the Los Angeles Times' website.
    Ross testified that at one point he had a tape from his home security system of then-NBA star O'Neal having sex with a woman, but it had been recorded over.
    Asked by a prosecutor if he really had such a video at the time of the attack, Ross replied, "It was over. It was gone."
    O'Neal and business partner Mark Stevens have denied involvement in statements to investigators, and neither has been charged or named in the criminal complaint.
    Attorney Nicholas Tonsich, who represented O'Neal and Stevens, did not immediately responded to a phone message left early Sunday morning by The Associated Press.
    According to a sheriff's report, Ross told investigators he was kidnapped at gunpoint by Main Street Crips gang members in West Hollywood in February 2008 and taken to the home of the gang's alleged leader Ladell Rowles. He said the gang members beat him, stole $15,000 in cash and some jewelry.
    He said another of the defendants, James Harbin, told him he needed to clear up an "issue" with O'Neal and Stevens, and threatened him.

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