House Budget Chairman Paul Ryan (L) (R-WI) introduces Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney (R) as he addresses supporters at Lawrence University during a campaign stop in Appleton, Wisconsin, March 30, 2012.

NEW YORK | Thu Aug 9, 2012 8:57pm EDT

NEW YORK (Reuters) - With Republican Mitt Romney on the verge of choosing a vice presidential running mate, conservatives have mounted a concerted campaign to boost the chances of Representative Paul Ryan, the architect of his party's controversial budget-cutting plan.

Often likening Ryan to Ronald Reagan, conservatives say the Wisconsin lawmaker's supposed drawbacks as a candidate - mostly stemming from the steep cuts in social safety net programs he has proposed - are actually strengths that could bring heft, content and perhaps a spark to Romney's campaign.

Romney, in an interview Thursday with NBC News, gave no indication who he might pick, but outlined what he was looking for in a running mate.

"I certainly expect to have a person that has a strength of character, a vision for the country that adds something to the political discourse about the direction of the country," he said.

Despite the nation's economic problems, Romney trails President Barack Obama in most polls three months from the November 6 election, and may even be losing momentum. A Reuters/Ipsos poll this week gave Obama a 7-point lead (49 to Romney's 42 percent), up slightly from a month ago.

Particularly enthusiastic backers of Ryan are opinion writers for the East Coast's leading conservative publications - like the Wall Street Journal, the National Review and the Weekly Standard. As if on cue, many of them weighed in this week in support of Ryan, almost daring Romney to pick him instead of more conventional short-listers, such as former Minnesota Governor Tim Pawlenty or Senator Rob Portman of Ohio.

The case against Ryan, 42, is that he is a lightning rod for criticism of the unpopular cuts in government health programs for the elderly and poor he proposed as chairman of the powerful House of Representatives Budget Committee

That is not a weakness, the conservatives argued, but a strength. They want Ryan's budget to be the issue and they want Ryan there to defend it.

Such a debate, they believe, could elevate the campaign beyond questions that are consuming it now, about Romney's unwillingness to disclose more than two years of tax returns for example, or his leadership of the investment firm, Bain Capital.

"Mr. Obama and the Democrats want to make this a small election over small things - Mitt's taxes, his wealth, Bain Capital," the Wall Street Journal editorialized Thursday as it pushed a Ryan choice.

"To win, Mr. Romney and the Republicans have to rise above those smaller issues and cast the choice as one about the overall direction and future of the country."

"Ryan is an ideologue in the best sense of the term," the National Review's Rich Lowry wrote in Politico. "He is motivated by ideas and knows what he believes and why. But he's not blinkered. He is an explainer and a persuader."

Romney has a choice to make - go with the tried and true, Portman or Pawlenty, or take a bit of a risk with Ryan, or look elsewhere. Many expect him to announce his choice soon, possibly as early as next week when he winds up a campaign trip in Portman's Ohio.

DEMOCRATS WELCOME RYAN

The risk of Ryan becomes apparent from talking with Democrats on Capitol Hill. While lawmakers and congressional aides from both parties use words like "smart," "telegenic," "young" and "exciting" to describe Ryan, Democrats seem him as a dream choice for different reasons.

"I would love for Romney to pick him," said one Democratic leadership aide. "It would crystallize everything for us. Just to have him on the ticket would even further elevate the Ryan budget."

That budget, which has been embraced by Romney, would reform the Medicare healthcare program for the elderly and disabled in a way that Democrats say would shift significant costs to those recipients. It also would cut deeply into other popular domestic programs, including education and the joint federal-state Medicaid healthcare program for the poor.

Another Democratic aide in Congress said if Ryan was the pick, "We could really with no effort wrap the Ryan budget around Romney." The aide added, "If he's not on the ticket we have to spend energy reminding folks" that Romney said he was in favor of Ryan's controversial budget.

Some Capitol Hill Republicans who support Ryan's proposals worry that the Democrats may be right about Ryan's impact.

"There is the practical political question as to whether or not we can truly win by being so blunt about the kind of changes most Republicans think have to be made to programs like Medicare," said a Republican aide who asked not to be named.

"It turns the election into an all-in bet," the aide said, adding, "The concern is that when you go all in, you can lose and be out of the game."

There's another concern as well: Ryan is the ultimate Washington insider in an anti-Washington era. He began his career in Congress as a congressional aide and has been in and around the Capitol most of the time since.

This week's editorials seemed in part designed to give Romney the courage to defy the conventional assessment of Ryan.

"That the hyper-cautious Romney is seriously considering him counts as one of the biggest surprises of a campaign almost entirely lacking in them. Picking Ryan would represent a Romney revolt against conventional wisdom. And appropriately so - since the conventional wisdom is wrong," National Review's Lowry wrote.

In the Weekly Standard, Bill Kristol and Stephen Hayes argued that the party "will be running on the Romney-Ryan plan no matter what. Having Paul Ryan on the ticket may well make it easier to defend the plan convincingly."

CLOSE TIES TO PAWLENTY

Will the pressure on Romney over his vice presidential choice matter in the end? Probably not, said former White House press secretary Ari Fleischer, a Republican political analyst.

"None of it matters - the only criteria should be whether the pick can become president and whether the relationship between Romney and his selection is strong."

If Romney were to pick the one person from among his short list with whom he has the closest ties, it would be Pawlenty, who quickly endorsed Romney after dropping out of his own race for the Republican presidential nomination last year.

Pawlenty, well-liked within the Romney campaign, has been an active campaign stand-in for Romney and was stumping for him in Michigan on Thursday.

Pawlenty is popular among evangelical conservatives whose active support Romney will need. Yet many analysts cite the fact that he failed to generate much excitement for his own candidacy as a strike against naming him as the No. 2. In 2008, he was passed over by then-nominee John McCain for the vice presidency.

"We'll know soon enough," Pawlenty told a crowd in Jackson, Michigan, on Wednesday, according to ABC News. Romney, he said, has a rich pool of conservative talent from which to choose and as a result he "can't make a bad pick."

If there is a tortoise in the race, it could be Portman, a brainy former White House budget director and former U.S. trade representative.

Many in Washington think he is the odds-on favorite despite misgivings about his ties to the George W. Bush White House. Picking him could help turn the tide for Romney in Ohio, a state he desperately needs to win and where he now trails Obama.

There is a long list of candidates beside Ryan, Pawlenty and Portman for his vice presidential running mate, whose most critical task will be to go head-to-head in a debate against sitting Vice President Joe Biden in October.

Among them are Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal, Florida Senator Marco Rubio, New Hampshire Senator Kelly Ayotte and Virginia Governor Bob McDonnnell.

The campaign has made it clear that an announcement could come soon, but has been coy on exactly when, a strategy that keeps interest in the decision high. Many believe Romney will announce the pick next week when the Olympics are over and after a four-state bus tour that starts in Virginia on Saturday and ends Tuesday in Ohio.

(Editing by Fred Barbash and Jackie Frank)

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Well-crafted doc offers a scholarly account of the birth of Herzl's Zionist movement

Friday, Aug. 10 (Moriah Films)

Richard Trank

Finely crafted and balancing sympathy for its subject with obvious scholarship, Richard Trank and Marvin Hier's It Is No Dream: The Life of Theodor Herzl introduces viewers to one of the most important figures in modern Jewish history. Though handsome, the doc's theatrical appeal is limited to those with a deep interest in Zionism; on home-vid, it will have a broader and long-lived historical value.

The portrait begins with present-day footage of vandalized synagogues and Neo-Nazi marches, over which a solemn voice declares that attacks on Jews "become daily more numerous." Only at the passage's end do we learn these words are not a fearful reminder of anti-Semitism's 21st Century persistence -- they were penned by Theodor Herzl in 1895, long before most people could imagine anything like a Holocaust.

Herzl, an assimilated Jew, didn't identify with his heritage until well into adulthood when, working as a journalist, he began to witness disturbing anti-Jew sentiment surrounding such events as the Dreyfus affair. The filmmakers offer a short but useful introduction to the ways hatred was brewing at the time, leading viewers to wonder why more people weren't as concerned as Herzl became.

For Herzl, protecting Jews (be they religious or not) soon became a passion, coloring his work as a reporter and playwright. In pondering solutions to "The Jewish Question," he seemingly ruled little out: At one point, he considered trying to arrange a mass conversion of European Jewry or challenging leading anti-Semites to duels. Speaking of a possible "apocalypse" in terms modern viewers will find prophetic, he eventually decided the only answer was a single nation where Jews could live without persecution.

Trank and Hier follow Herzl's remarkable campaign for a state of Israel -- in which he courted millionaires and heads of state, convened the first Zionist Congress, and seemingly worked himself into an early grave -- using an impressive array of historical documents and photos. Narrator Ben Kingsley delivers the sometimes drily scholarly account without allowing it to become soporific, getting an assist from Christoph Waltz, who supplies Herzl's voice. All production values, from the presentation of vintage photos to present-day film of historical locales, are top-notch.

Production Company: Moriah Films
Director-Screenwriter: Richard Trank
Producers: Marvin Hier, Richard Trank
Director of photography: Jeffrey Victor
Music: Lee Holdridge
Editor: Nimrod Erez
No rating, 96 minutes

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People enter the Goldman Sachs Group Inc. global headquarters, also known by its address as 200 West Street, in New York's lower Manhattan, April 19, 2010.

WASHINGTON | Thu Aug 9, 2012 9:45pm EDT

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The U.S. Justice Department said it will not pursue criminal charges against Goldman Sachs Group Inc or its employees related to accusations that the firm bet against the same subprime mortgage securities it was selling to clients.

The decision not to prosecute Goldman, a firm held up by critics as a symbol of Wall Street greed during the 2007-2009 financial crisis, highlights the difficulty in prosecuting crisis-related cases.

Few expected the bank to face criminal charges, but in April 2011, U.S. Senator Carl Levin asked for a criminal investigation after the subcommittee he leads spent more than a year looking into Goldman.

The accusations were aired in a heated 2010 Congressional hearing in which Levin grilled Goldman Chief Executive Lloyd Blankfein for hours about whether it was morally correct for the firm to sell its clients products described internally as "crap".

"The department and investigative agencies ultimately concluded that the burden of proof to bring a criminal case could not be met based on the law and facts as they exist at this time," the Justice Department said in a statement late on Thursday.

The DOJ does not typically make public statements when it concludes an investigation.

Neil Barofsky, a former watchdog for the U.S. government's financial system bailout in 2008, said the announcement was a stark reminder that no individual or institution had been held meaningfully accountable for their role in the financial crisis.

"Without such accountability, the unending parade of megabanks scandals will inevitably continue," said Barofsky, who has been an outspoken critic of the government's response to the financial crisis.

In a brief statement emailed to Reuters, a Goldman Sachs spokesman said: "We are pleased that this matter is behind us."

A Levin aide had no immediate comment.

In a related civil case, Goldman settled with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission for $550 million in July 2010, without admitting wrongdoing.

The SEC, in one of its premier financial crisis cases, said Goldman failed to tell investors the Paulson & Co hedge fund helped choose and bet against the subprime mortgage-backed securities underlying an investment product named Abacus.

The SEC is still pursuing a civil complaint against Fabrice Tourre, a Goldman vice president involved in the Abacus deal.

Separately on Thursday, Goldman said the SEC had dropped an investigation into the firm's role in selling a different $1.3 billion subprime mortgage-related deal arranged in 2006.

TARNISHED REPUTATION

The Abacus deal was a major focus of the televised hearings held by Levin's subcommittee in 2010. The hearings and a following report from Levin's Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations weighed on Goldman's shares as the firm suffered a reputational hit from the unwelcome spotlight.

Goldman -- dubbed a "great vampire squid" in a 2009 article in Rolling Stone magazine -- has continued to be dogged by criticism, including from its own ranks.

A Goldman Sachs banker in March published a withering resignation letter in the New York Times, calling the Wall Street titan a "toxic" place.

In its release on Thursday, the Justice Department said there was "not a viable basis to bring a criminal prosecution" against Goldman. If new or additional evidence emerged, it could make a different determination, it said.

Prosecuting financial fraud would continue to be a top priority and it highlighted other investigations, including its probe into banks' alleged manipulation of Libor, a widely used benchmark for interest rates.

The SEC has brought a handful of high-profile cases related to the financial crisis, including against former Countrywide Financial Chief Executive Angelo Mozilo and its case against Goldman. But the Justice Department has struggled to bring criminal charges.

The frustration, in part, has been because such charges involve securing evidence that shows beyond a reasonable doubt a defendant intended to break the law.

For example, a federal jury in 2009 acquitted two former Bear Stearns hedge fund managers accused of continuing to push souring investments as sound.

Jurors said prosecutors did not prove the case, which relied on e-mail evidence, beyond a reasonable doubt. Since then, the Justice Department has brought few major prosecutions tied to the subprime crisis.

In January, President Barack Obama announced a new task force to investigate misconduct that fueled the financial crisis, and the Justice Department has said it has issued more than a dozen civil subpoenas and has multiple inquiries underway.

So far, no cases have come out of that effort, and some critics have dismissed the task force as an election-year stunt.

(Reporting by David Ingram and Aruna Viswanatha, Writing by Karey Wutkowski; Editing by Gary Hill and Richard Pullin)

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Arty brief encounters in contemporary Vienna.

Locarno Film Festival

Mary Margaret O’Hara, Bobby Sommer, Ela Piplits

Jem Cohen

LOCARNO -- Wintry Vienna provides the picturesque backdrop for this engrossing U.S.-Austrian co-production, a lightly experimental fusion of drama and documentary that has just premiered at the Locarno Film Festival in Switzerland. The writer-director Jem Cohen has built his career largely outside the commercial mainstream, though his work has been shown in the Museum of Modern Art and the Whitney. Museum Hours is an unorthodox hybrid beast, but still the 50-year-old New Yorker’s most conventional dramatic feature to date. Full of charm, intelligence and dry humour, it deserves to find a discerning theatrical audience beyond Cohen’s usual festival-circuit following.
The cult Canadian singer and occasional actor Mary Margaret O’Hara gives an engagingly natural performance as Anne, a first-time visitor to the Austrian capital, where her distant cousin lies in a coma. There she meets urbane art museum guard Johann, played by non-professional actor Bobby Sommer, who kindly offers his services as a local guide and translator. The two form an easy non-sexual bond, walking and talking their way across the city like a middle-aged version of the couple in Richard Linklater’s Viennese rom-com Before Sunrise.
Cutting unobtrusively between 16mm and digital, Cohen interweaves this fragmentary plot with close-up studies of paintings from one of Vienna’s main art galleries, plus footage he gleaned while walking the city’s streets, random snapshots of minor characters and discursive musings on the social context of art. The focus is fuzzy and the pace leisurely, but deliberately so, as the director’s high-minded intentions slowly become clear.
One of the inspirational seeds of the film was the work of the 16th century Dutch painter Pieter Breughel, which figures prominently throughout the film. Breughel’s egalitarian approach to painting, giving background figures equal prominence with nominal headline stars, is discussed at length in a slightly stilted lecture scene. Cohen clearly admires this proto-modernist attitude to plot and character, adopting it himself in Museum Hours, with its diffuse and elliptical narrative.
Cohen has worked on promo videos, concert films and live collaborations with musicians including REM, Patti Smith, Fugazi and the late Vic Chesnutt. He cites punk rock as a career-shaping influence, which shows even in contemplative culture-vulture works like Museum Hours. Indeed, Smith and Fugazi’s Guy Picciotto have producer credits, and the film is dedicated to Chesnutt. O’Hara is a singer too, of course, and her character breaks into song in several scenes. Sommer is also a musician and former rock promoter who now works for the Viennale film festival, where Cohen has been a regular guest for many years.
Museum Hours demands patience and engagement from viewers, and Cohen could comfortably cut 20 minutes without lessening its intellectual or aesthetic impact. But the film’s more arid and arty touches are offset by an appealing thread of understated humour, including deadpan musings on heavy metal and the lazy leftist notion of “late capitalism."
At the heart of the film is an absorbing argument that dusty old artworks have plenty to tell us about contemporary life -- especially about money, politics, power, social class and sex. Cohen makes this point in a brief but inspired fantasy sequence, filling the art gallery with naked customers. Later, he reiterates the message by framing modern Viennese street scenes as animated paintings that Johan then deconstructs in the language of art criticism. Cerebral stuff, but all delivered with warmth, wit and quiet confidence.
Venue: Locarno Film Festival
Production companies: Little Magnet Films, Gravity Hill Films, KGP GmbH
Cast: Mary Margaret O’Hara, Bobby Sommer, Ela Piplits
Director: Jem Cohen
Producers: Paolo Calamitra, Gabriele Kranzelbinder, Jem Cohen, Patti Smith, Guy Picciotto
Cinematography: Jem Cohen, Peter Roehsler
Editor: Jem Cohen, Mark Vives
Sales companies: Little Magnet Films
Rating TBC, 107 minutes

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Chesapeake Energy Corporation's 50 acre campus is seen in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma, on April 17, 2012.

ATLANTA | Thu Aug 9, 2012 8:03pm EDT

ATLANTA (Reuters) - Chesapeake Energy said it is the subject of a U.S. government investigation over possible criminal antitrust violations related to the purchase and lease of oil and gas properties in Michigan.

Chesapeake has received a subpoena from the antitrust division of the Justice Department's Midwest field office, requiring the company to produce documents before a grand jury in the Western District of Michigan, according to a filing with U.S. regulators on Thursday.

In June, Reuters reported that Chesapeake plotted with its top competitor, Canada's Encana Corp, to suppress land prices in the Collingwood shale in Northern Michigan.

Emails between Chesapeake and Encana showed the two companies repeatedly discussed how to avoid bidding against each other in a public land auction in Michigan two years ago and in at least nine prospective deals with private land owners.

The Justice Department is "moving criminally," said Darren Bush, a former antitrust attorney for the Department of Justice and a professor of antitrust law at the University of Houston. "They are working their way through the grand jury process to potentially serve up indictments."

Chesapeake's disclosure indicates the Justice Department has moved swiftly on the matter. Reuters published its story on June 25. Just four days later, on June 29, the subpoena was served on Chesapeake, according to the company's quarterly report filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission.

The Reuters report showed Chesapeake and Encana executives, including Chesapeake Chief Executive Aubrey McClendon, exchanged emails about dividing up the nine Michigan counties and landowners in an effort to prevent "acreage prices from continuing to push up," and establishing "bidding responsibilities" ahead of an October 2010 Michigan state land auction.

A spokesman for Encana was not immediately available to comment. A spokesman for Chesapeake declined comment, but the filing said the company is cooperating with the investigations. Chesapeake also said its board of directors is conducting an internal review of the matter.

Price-fixing, bid-rigging and market allocations by competitors are illegal in the United States under the Sherman Antitrust Act, and companies can be fined up to $100 million for each offense.

Chesapeake acknowledged in June that it held talks with Encana but said the two companies never consummated any agreement and never bid jointly. Encana said it held talks with Chesapeake without reaching an agreement on a joint venture. The Canadian company has begun an internal inquiry led by the chairman of its board of directors.

Chesapeake said in the filing with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission that it has also received demands for documents and information from state governmental agencies in connection with other probes relating to oil and gas rights transactions.

A spokeswoman for the Michigan Attorney General's office, which has also opened an investigation into possible collusion between Chesapeake and Encana, declined to comment. A Justice Department spokeswoman did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Chesapeake has been operating under a cloud of legal and governance issues following Reuters investigations showing potential conflicts of interest on the part of McClendon as well as the collusion allegations.

Shares of Chesapeake fell 2.5 percent to $19.80 from a New York Stock Exchange close of $20.31 in post market trading.

(Reporting By Michael Erman and Joshua Schneyer in New York, Scott Haggett in Calgary and Anna Driver in Houston; Editing by David Gregorio and Carol Bishopric)

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Raunchy thriller is one of the worst Hindi films of the year.

Aug. 3

Sunny Leone, Arunoday Singh, Randeep Hooda, Arif Zakaria

Pooja Bhatt

The week that Jism 2 opened in India, mobs burned an effigy of director Pooja Bhatt, protesting the salacious content of the film (whose title means "body" in Hindi and rhymes with "kiss 'em"). It would be understandable if a similar mob of disgruntled movie critics is planning to do the same.

By turns wooden, hysterically overemotional and laugh-out-loud bad, Jism 2 will always be remembered as the film that launched Indo-Canadian porn star Sunny Leone in Bollywood. Beyond that, the film is a forgettable thriller with risible dialogue, an outlandish premise and a sex quotient that won’t shock anyone with a cable TV subscription.

STORY: Porn Star Sunny Leone Debuts in Bollywood

Bhatt and her father, flamboyant producer Mahesh Bhatt, are claiming that this movie boldly breaks through India’s stodgy old Victorian morals, but all of the film’s impact has been felt on the streets outside theaters rather than at the box office: Despite making headlines around the world for a promise of racy content and its accompanying controversies, Jism 2 hasn’t been able to recover from a sharp drop at the Indian box office after its strong opening.

Among the diaspora audience in the United States, Jism 2 hasn’t made an impact at all. This might be because overseas Indians know they can find far better and more titillating material elsewhere, but it could also be because its distributor has had to limit its release to Indian American theaters since no mainstream chain would touch it with a 10-foot pole.

The story is a predictable potboiler about top-secret Indian government agent Ayaan (Arunoday Singh), who hires Izna, a porn actress, as a honey trap to trick a wanted terrorist who is also her ex-boyfriend, Kabir (Randeep Hooda), into giving up a computer file containing the names of his accomplices. It’s a formula: kiss, kiss, bang, bang, oil massage, death scene and a few songs -- including one featuring the terrorist playing an anguished cello solo.

STORY: Sherlyn Chopra Becomes First Indian to Pose for Playboy

Pooja Bhatt’s directorial skills may be debatable, but the woman knows how to cast a movie. Hooda, first discovered by Mira Nair and cast as an Australian hottie visiting India in Monsoon Wedding, smolders to the best of his ability in the role of a violent criminal whose only vulnerability is his love for Izna. Singh also turns in a smart, capable performance as the heroic agent who also ends up falling in love with the brunette beauty, though both actors are limited by a messy script.

Obviously, Leone is the selling point of the entire exercise. Sporting a wardrobe that can best be described as Frederick’s of Bollywood (tight animal print pants and macramé tops, cleavage-bearing mini-dresses and six-inch heels), Leone does her best to convince the viewer that men are willing to die for the chance of a night in her arms.

The kerfuffle over Jism 2’s movie posters (banned in Mumbai) and the effigy burning proves that Mahesh Bhatt and his team have mastered the art of PR. Now, if his decades-old production house could only put as much energy into cranking out a watchable movie, they might be on to something.

Cast: Sunny Leone, Arunoday Singh, Randeep Hooda, Arif Zakaria
Director: Pooja Bhatt
Screenwriters: Mahesh Bhatt, Shagufta Rafique
Producers: Pooja Bhatt, Dino Morea
Editor: Devendra Murdeshwar
Music: Arko Pravo Mukherjee, Mithoon, Rushk & Abdul Bassith Saeed
Not rated, 129 minutes

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George Zimmerman appears for a bond hearing at the Seminole County Criminal Justice Center in Sanford, Florida, June 29, 2012.

MIAMI | Thu Aug 9, 2012 5:14pm EDT

MIAMI (Reuters) - Lawyers for a Florida man charged in the shooting of black teenager Trayvon Martin said on Thursday they will seek a hearing under a controversial self-defense law that could result in the dismissal of criminal charges against him.

George Zimmerman's lawyers said they saw "clear support for a strong claim of self-defense" after prosecutors released much of their evidence in the case.

Zimmerman, 28, has pleaded not guilty to second-degree murder in the February 26 shooting death of Martin in the central Florida of Sanford. He claims he shot the unarmed 17-year-old in self defense while acting as a neighborhood watch volunteer.

Florida's "Stand Your Ground" law allows people to use deadly force when they fear great bodily harm or death. Supporters of the law, which was enacted in 2005, argue it is intended to serve as a deterrent to violent crime, but critics charge it encourages vigilante justice.

In a hearing under "Stand Your Ground," a judge, not a jury, determines whether evidence meets criteria laid out in the law, said David Weinstein, a former Florida state and federal prosecutor now in private practice in Miami.

If the judge rules in Zimmerman's favor, he would be granted immunity from prosecution in Martin's death.

"If Zimmerman wins the hearing, it's case over," said Weinstein.

On the other hand, if the case goes forward to a full-blown trial, the hearing would offer the prosecution a good look at the defense strategy, he added.

"This is your shot. You lay it all out," said Weinstein.

Lawyers for Zimmerman said it would take several months to prepare for the hearing, which they expect to focus on whether Zimmerman "reasonably believed that his use of his weapon was necessary to prevent bodily harm to himself."

CONFRONTATION IN STREET

Zimmerman shot and killed Martin during a confrontation in a gated community. Martin was walking back from a store when Zimmerman called a 911 dispatcher and said the teen looked suspicious.

Zimmerman said he shot Martin after Martin attacked him and repeatedly slammed his head to the ground. Citing the self-defense law, police initially declined to arrest Zimmerman for several weeks after the shooting.

Minutes before he was killed, Martin spoke with a girlfriend on his cellphone. That conversation may prove to be crucial testimony in the hearing, said Charles Rose, a professor at the Stetson University College of Law.

"The hearing may very well rotate around what Trayvon Martin did or did not say while he was on the phone right before the altercation," said Rose.

Ben Crump, a lawyer for Martin's family, said he expects the case will eventually go to trial.

"A grown man cannot profile and pursue an unarmed child, shoot him in the heart and then claim 'Stand Your Ground,'" he said in statement. "We believe that the killer's motion will be denied."

On Thursday, prosecutors released new evidence in the case, including Zimmerman's college records. But they later recalled some of the documents after realizing they included an indistinct photo of Martin's dead body, which is protected under Florida's privacy laws.

Zimmerman is free on a $1 million bond and living in an undisclosed safe house near Sanford.

(Additional reporting by Barbara Liston in Orlando and David Adams in Miami; Editing by Doina Chiacu and Philip Barbara)

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Beauty and horror on the high seas

Venue

Locarno Film Festival screening, August 8

Véréna Paravel, Lucien Castaing-Taylor

LOCARNO - Shot on board a fishing vessel off the New England coast, this experimental documentary has so far proven to be the most stylistically bold and visually striking world premiere at this year’s Locarno Film Festival in Switzerland. A wordless montage of footage filmed on small digital cameras from every dark corner of the boat, Leviathan is an immersive examination of a highly mechanized industrial process, the men who work at it and the thousands of poor fish who cross their path. A symphony of murky, grainy, jittery images and clanking, whirring, droning sounds, this is an abstract audio-visual experience as much as it is an observational film.

Based at Harvard University’s Sensory Ethnography Lab, the Anglo-French directing duo of Lucien Castaing-Taylor and Véréna Paravel specialize in work that straddles the borders between visual art, documentary and anthropology. Some of their previous films are now part of the permanent collections in New York’s Museum of Modern Art and the British Museum in London. Although probably too esoteric for a full big-screen release, this US/UK/France co-production will undoubtedly screen at festivals, in art galleries and on highbrow TV channels.

Despite the lack of dialogue or editorial voice, there are flashes of literary intelligence and dark humor at work in Leviathan. The film’s Biblical title invokes both the best-known work of English philosopher Thomas Hobbes and Herman Melville’s Moby-Dick, while the minimal credits include the full Latin names of all the fish harvested on screen. They are also written in a gothic font that suggests heavy metal albums and horror movies.

From its isolated nocturnal setting to it blood-splattered scenes of mass seafood slaughter, there is certainly something hellish about Leviathan, whose murky hand-held aesthetic initially feels like the set-up for a mock-documentary monster movie in the spirit of The Blair Witch Project or Cloverfield. It would not seem too surprising if some mythic maritime beast like Jaws or Cthulhu lurched out of these inky depths and sucked the crew down to a watery grave.

Some of the deadpan observational sequences in Leviathan become overlong and repetitive, and the deliberate lack of context or commentary feels frustrating at times. But this seemingly random process also throws up some arrestingly powerful imagery, including macabre close-up shots of discarded fish heads waltzing across a wet floor as the boat pitches and rolls, and a squadron of seagulls swooping over a mini-camera as it bobs in and out of the ocean.

With their inspired use of cutting-edge camera technology to explore one of the oldest trades in human history, Castaing-Taylor and Paravel have made a highly original film of uncompromising, other-worldly beauty. Leviathan demands to be seen, even if it means you never eat seafood again.

Venue: Locarno Film Festival screening, August 8

Production companies: Arrête Ton Cinema, Harbor Picture Company
Directors: Véréna Paravel, Lucien Castaing-Taylor
Producers: Véréna Paravel, Lucien Castaing-Taylor
Cinematography: Véréna Paravel, Lucien Castaing-Taylor
Editors: Véréna Paravel, Lucien Castaing-Taylor
Sales company: Arrête Ton Cinema
Rating TBC, 87 minutes

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Diplomat Lakhdar Brahimi speaks with former U.S. President Jimmy Carter (not pictured) during a joint news conference in Khartoum May 27, 2012.

WASHINGTON | Thu Aug 9, 2012 7:23pm EDT

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Veteran Algerian diplomat Lakhdar Brahimi is expected to replace Kofi Annan as the U.N.-Arab League joint special envoy for Syria barring a last-minute change, diplomats said on Thursday.

The former Algerian foreign minister, who has a long history as a diplomatic troubleshooter, will have his work cut out for him in Syria, where President Bashar al-Assad is using his security forces to try to crush a 17-month-old pro-democracy rebellion.

Annan, a former U.N. secretary-general and Nobel Peace Prize laureate, said last week he would step down as the special envoy because he was unable to do his job with the U.N. Security Council hopelessly deadlocked over Syria.

Brahimi's appointment could be announced as early as next week but the diplomats, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said there are sometimes last-minute changes if a key government has concerns about the choice or the candidate has misgivings.

Brahimi, 78, has served as a U.N. special envoy in a series of challenging circumstances, including in Iraq after the U.S. invasion that toppled Saddam Hussein, in Afghanistan both before and after the end of Taliban rule and in South Africa as it emerged from the apartheid era.

Syria, however, may present an unusually vexing assignment, in part because international action to try to end the violence has been stymied by the disagreements between the five veto-holding permanent members of the U.N. Security Council.

While the council united in April to approve the deployment of 300 monitors to Syria to observe a failed ceasefire as part of Annan's peace plan, Russia and China vetoed three other resolutions that criticized Syria and threatened sanctions against Damascus.

In announcing his resignation, Annan explicitly blamed "finger-pointing and name-calling" at the Security Council for his decision to quit, but suggested his successor may have better luck.

Assad's forces have killed more than 15,000 people since March of 2011 in a sustained effort to end the anti-government rebellion, some Western leaders say. Damascus says the rebels have killed several thousand members of its security forces.

Assad has suffered a series of blows in recent weeks, including the defection of his prime minister, Riyad Hijab, on Monday and the assassination of four of his top security officials last month.

He named a new prime minister, Wael al-Halki, on Thursday as government forces pushed rebels back from a strategic district in Aleppo, Syria's commercial hub and largest city.

In accepting Annan's resignation, U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon thanked him for having taken on "this most difficult and potentially thankless of assignments."

A spokesman for Ban, who is expected to formally name Annan's successor, was not immediately available for comment.

(Reporting By Arshad Mohammed; additional reporting by Michelle Nichols at the United Nations. Editing by Christopher Wilson)

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People walk past a wall mural painted by Brazilian graffiti artists Os Gemeos in Boston August 8, 2012.

BOSTON | Wed Aug 8, 2012 10:52pm EDT

BOSTON (Reuters) - Like many famous works of art before it, a colorful mural that dominates a park across from Boston's main train station has stirred some controversy.

The 70-foot-by-70-foot (21-metre-by-21-metre) painting by Brazilian twin brothers Otavio and Gustafo Pandolfo, known as Os Gemeos, depicts a character wearing bright, mismatched clothes, his face wrapped in what appears to be a scarf except for his squinting eyes.

The work, which will be exhibited until November 2013, became a flashpoint when a local Fox television station quoted passersby criticizing the masked cartoon-like figure, which some found menacing, saying it should be removed.

The mural is painted on an air intake structure on the Greenway in downtown Boston's Dewey Square. The giant piece by Os Gemeos, which is Portuguese for "The Twins," is part of their first solo U.S. exhibition, now on display at the nearby Institute of Contemporary Art/Boston.

Jill Medvedow, director of the museum, played down the controversy. "This work of art is a joyful addition to Boston's skyline. With tremendous mastery of scale, painterly skill and vibrant patterning, Os Gemeos brings urban energy and a rich tradition of Brazilian creativity to Dewey Square in Boston. Good art gets people talking," she said.

Boston Mayor Thomas Menino also tried to defuse the issue.

"We don't need somebody out there to divide us and saying that's a racist thing, that's against a religion. It isn't," he said. "That was made to show a young boy out there and that's what I believe it is."

The mural was funded by the Institute of Contemporary art and private donations to the Rose Kennedy Greenway Conservancy, an organization that takes care of five of the city's parks including the one at Dewey Square.

Residents enjoying themselves on the Greenway on Wednesday, where the band Receita de Samba provided additional Brazilian flavor, mostly praised the work for its originality and beauty.

"It's nice," said Loreno St. Dubois, a 58-year-old postal employee from South Boston, who added that he could understand the negatives reactions to it.

Ben Gebo, 27, a freelance photographer hired by the conservancy to document the mural's creation, said as the piece was painted its meaning changed.

"I see it as an interesting artwork. I'm still not exactly sure what it's supposed to be," he said. "It's really up to the eye of the beholder. It definitely draws attention and gets people talking, which I think is the important thing."

(Reporting By Joseph O'Leary; editing by Ros Krasny and Patricia Reaney)

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1 of 12. A Free Syrian Army fighter fires an anti-aircraft gun as a Syrian Air Force fighter bomber fires rockets during an air strike in the village of Tel Rafat, some 37 km (23 miles) north of Aleppo, August 9, 2012.

ALEPPO, Syria | Thu Aug 9, 2012 5:19am EDT

ALEPPO, Syria (Reuters) - Syrian rebels said they had regained control over parts of a strategic district of Aleppo on Thursday after countering a sustained assault by President Bashar al-Assad's forces seeking to retake Syria's biggest city.

They said army tanks had pulled back from Salaheddine, the southern gateway to Aleppo, and pockets of fighting continued across the district which Syrian official media said on Wednesday had been "cleansed" of rebel fighters.

As the battle for Aleppo raged, Assad's key foreign backer Iran gathered ministers from like-minded states for talks about how to end the conflict. Russia, a key Assad ally, said its ambassador to Tehran would attend.

Assad must win the battle for Aleppo if he is to reassert his authority nationwide, although diverting military forces for an offensive to regain control there has already allowed rebels to seize large swathes of countryside in the north.

As part of a broader army offensive, Assad's forces attacked rebels on several fronts including a neighborhood near the airport in south-east Aleppo, several eastern districts, and a town on Aleppo's north-western outskirts, state media said.

Reuters journalists in Tel Rifaat, 20 miles north of Aleppo, watched a Syrian air force jet diving and firing rockets, causing villagers to flee in panic.

Abu Ali, a rebel brigade commander, told Reuters in Aleppo he had rallied 400 fighters of the Amr bin al-Aas brigade in response to Wednesday's army offensive in Salaheddine.

"We are here to be martyred," he told his men before joining them - despite being confined to a wheelchair by a recent wound - and coordinating their operations via walkie-talkie.

"In Salaheddine now there are certain areas controlled by the (rebel) Free Syrian Army and some by the Syrian army," said Abu Ali, adding that his men were in control of the main Salaheddine square.

Despite persistent rebel concerns about low levels of ammunition, Abu Ali said they were able to keep some supplies flowing to the fighters, though he would not give details.

IRAN MEETING

Though sympathetic to the rebels, Western powers, Turkey and Sunni Muslim Arab states have not intervened militarily. Russia has given Assad diplomatic backing which has blocked U.N. action against him, while Iran has tried to bolster the Syrian leader in an Arab world where many view non-Arab, Shi'ite Iran as a menace.

Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has billed the Tehran meeting of a dozen countries as an opportunity "to replace military clashes with political, indigenous approaches to settle the disputes". Those attending would have "a correct and realistic position" on the Syrian conflict, a senior Iranian diplomat said this week, indicating a one-sided discussion.

"The Islamic Republic's support for Assad's regime is hardly compatible with a genuine attempt at conciliation between the parties," said one Western diplomat based in Tehran. It showed Iran was "running out of ideas", he added.

Another Western diplomat said Tehran was trying to broaden the support base of the Syrian leader.

ALEPPO BATTLE

Aleppo, at the heart of Syria's failing economy, has taken a fearful pounding since the 17-month-old uprising against Assad finally took hold in a city that had stayed mostly aloof.

The intensity of the conflict in Aleppo suggests that Assad remains determined to cling to power, with support from Iran and Russia, despite setbacks such as this week's defection of his newly installed prime minister.

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a British-based opposition watchdog, said more than 170 people had been killed across Syria on Wednesday, including 33 civilians in Aleppo. It put Tuesday's death toll at more than 240 nationwide.

The military's assaults in Aleppo follow its successful drive to retake neighborhoods seized by rebels in Damascus after a July 18 bomb attack that killed four of Assad's closest aides, the biggest strike by Assad's foes so far.

On Monday, Assad suffered the embarrassment of seeing his prime minister, Riyad Hijab, defect after only two months in office. Hijab fled to Jordan with his family.

Yet even such high-profile defections and outside diplomatic pressure seem unlikely to deflect Assad from what has become a bitter struggle for survival between mostly Sunni Muslim rebels and a ruling system dominated by the president's minority Alawite sect, an esoteric offshoot of Shi'ite Islam.

Syrian rebels, who have accused Iran of sending fighters to help Assad's forces, seized 48 Iranians in Syria on August 4, saying they were members of Iran's Revolutionary Guards.

An Iranian Foreign Ministry official said on Thursday that all the Iranian captives were alive and well, contrary to statements by rebels holding them that three had been killed in an air attack.

Iranian Foreign Minister Ali Akbar Salehi acknowledged that some of the men were retired soldiers or Revolutionary Guards, but said they were religious pilgrims, not on active service.

Damascus and Tehran accuse Turkey, Saudi Arabia, Qatar and Western nations of stoking violence by backing Syrian rebels.

The violence in Syria has forced tens of thousands of people to flee into neighboring countries, and about 2,400 refugees, including two generals, arrived in Turkey on Tuesday night.

Near the Syrian border town of al-Dana, a crowd of refugees from Aleppo crammed through a frontier fence as Turkish soldiers tried to keep order: "We could not endure anymore," Ahmad Shaaban, a grocer from Aleppo's Salaheddine district told a Reuters correspondent at the border.

"We have been deprived of everything. They have burnt our homes and have deprived us of our livelihood."

(Additional reporting by Suleiman al-Khalidi in al-Dana, Syria and Yeganeh Torbati in Dubai; Writing by Dominic Evans; Editing by Giles Elgood)

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