A Turkish actress has been naked her body for the first time with a German boy. The appearance of Turkish-German actress Sila Sahin’s attractive, naked body in the May issue of Playboy magazine shows how young women with immigrant backgrounds can rid themselves of religious and cultural constraints, without needing to cite statistics or elaborate arguments provided by integration expertsIt’s usually no longer a big deal when a celebrity or starlet takes off her clothes for the men’s magazine. The unrelenting overexposure to sexually explicit images in the media, advertisements and the Internet has made public nudity so socially acceptable that we barely take notice.
But the 25-year-old Sahin, who plays “Ayala” in the RTL German soap opera “Good Times, Bad Times” managed to link her public exposure to the debate over a central socio-political issue: that young Muslim—in this case, Turkish — women are not allowed to make the same kind of decisions over their own lives and bodies that the daughters of the sexually revealing majority have been able to make for some time.
“For me, these pictures are an act of liberation from the cultural constraints of my childhood,” says Sahin. “I have tried to please everybody for too long. With these images I want to show young Turkish women that it is OK to live the way they are; that it is not cheap to show skin; that you should pursue your goals instead of bowing down to others.”
It may very well be that the first appearance of a Turkish woman on the cover of the German Playboy is most of all a welcome opportunity for the glossy magazine, which could use the immigration debate to boost its somewhat out-of-date image.
And the still relatively unknown Sahin was admittedly presented with a PR opportunity to stick out of the daily host of nudes by fashioning herself as a brave trailblazer for emancipation.
Still, her interview in the magazine opens a window into the patronizing situations young Muslim girls and women have to deal with on a daily basis.
Growing up “with a father who is an actor and a very conservative mother, I am not speaking for everyone, but in my case, things were black or white. Sex before marriage was bad, you have to pray every Friday and so on.” For a long time she “thought I have to do what the man says.”
Purists of female emancipation and cultural critics may sniff at the fact that Sila Sahin sees an act of liberation in posing naked for men who are not primarily interested in intellectual discourse. But the tastefully shot nude photos of the young Turkish woman remind us that the reviled commercialization of the female body that today seems just like an unavoidable part of every day life, played an important role in the history of female emancipation in the Western world.
With Sahin’s nude pictures framed as a contribution to the debate over emancipation of young Muslim women, the German Playboy builds on the historical tradition of the American original.
Its first edition, published in 1953 with a Marilyn Monroe centerfold, was undeniably the journalistic spearhead of a then still dormant sexual openness in a strictly puritan America.
PLEASANT GROVE, Ala. (AP) — Dozens of tornadoes ripped through the South, flattening homes and businesses and killing at least 214 people in six states in the deadliest outbreak in nearly 40 years.
As day broke Thursday, people in hard-hit Alabama surveyed flattened, debris-strewn neighborhoods and told of pulling bodies from rubble after the storms passed Wednesday afternoon and evening.
Tamisha Cunningham who suffered a leg injury when her home was destroyed, looks over the damage while waiting for medical care, near Athens, Ala., Wednesday, April 27, 2011. Homes in the area were completely destroyed following a tornado that cut a path through Lawrence, Morgan and Limestone Counties. (AP Photo/The Decatur Daily, Gary Cosby Jr)
"It happened so fast it was unbelievable," said Jerry Stewart, a 63-year-old retired firefighter who was picking through the remains of his son's wrecked home in Pleasant Grove, a suburb of Birmingham. "They said the storm was in Tuscaloosa and it would be here in 15 minutes. And before I knew it, it was here."
He and his wife, along with their daughter and two grandchildren, survived by hiding under their front porch. Friends down the street who did the same weren't so lucky — Stewart said he pulled out the bodies of two neighbors whose home was ripped off its foundation.
Alabama's state emergency management agency said it had confirmed 131 deaths, while there were 32 in Mississippi, 29 in Tennessee, 13 in Georgia, eight in Virginia and one in Kentucky.
The National Weather Service's Storm Prediction Center in Norman, Okla., said it received 137 tornado reports into Wednesday night.
Some of the worst damage was in Tuscaloosa, a city of more than 83,000 that is home to the University of Alabama. Neighborhoods there were leveled by a massive tornado caught on video by a tower-mounted news camera that barreled through late Wednesday afternoon.
"When I looked back, I just saw trees and stuff coming by," said Mike Whitt, a resident at DCH Regional Medical Center who ran from the hospital's parking deck when the wind started swirling and he heard a roar.
On Thursday morning, he walked through the neighborhood next to the hospital, home to a mix of students and townspeople, looking at dozens of homes without roofs. Household items were scattered on the ground — a drum, running shoes, insulation, towels, and a shampoo bottle. Streets were impassable, the pavement strewn with trees, pieces of houses and cars with their windows blown out.
Dr. David Hinson was working at the hospital when the tornado hit. He and his wife had to walk several blocks to get to their house, which was destroyed. Several houses down, he helped pull three students from the rubble. One was dead and two were badly injured. He and others used pieces of debris as makeshift stretchers to carry them to an ambulance.
"We just did the best we could to get them out and get them stabilized and get them to help," he said. "I don't know what happened to them."
University officials said there didn't appear to be significant damage on campus, and dozens of students and locals were staying at a 125-bed shelter in the campus recreation center.
The storm system spread destruction from Texas to New York, where dozens of roads were flooded or washed out. The governors of Alabama, Mississippi and Georgia issued emergency declarations for parts of their states.
Dave Imy, a meteorologist with the prediction service, said the deaths were the most in a tornado outbreak killed 315 people in 1974.
In Alabama, where as many as a million people were without power, Gov. Robert Bentley said 2,000 national guard troops had been activated and were helping to search devastated areas for people still missing. He said the National Weather Service and forecasters did a good job of alerting people, but there is only so much that can be done to deal with powerful tornadoes a mile wide.
President Barack Obama said he had spoken with Bentley and approved his request for emergency federal assistance.
"Our hearts go out to all those who have been affected by this devastation, and we commend the heroic efforts of those who have been working tirelessly to respond to this disaster," Obama said in a statement.
The storms came on the heels of another system that killed 10 people in Arkansas and one in Mississippi earlier this week. Less than two weeks earlier, a smaller batch of twisters raced through Alabama, touching off warning sirens, damaging businesses and downing power lines in Tuscaloosa, but there were no deaths there then.
In Kemper County, Miss., in the east-central part of the state, sisters Florrie Green and Maxine McDonald, and their sister-in-law Johnnie Green, all died in a mobile home that was destroyed by a storm.
"They were thrown into those pines over there," Mary Green, Johnnie Green's daughter-in-law, said, pointing to a wooded area. "They had to go look for their bodies."
And in Pleasant Grove, Samantha Nail surveyed the damage in the blue-collar subdivision where hers was the only home still intact. The storm slammed heavy pickup trucks into ditches and obliterated tidy brick houses, leaving behind a mess of mattresses, electronics and children's toys scattered across a grassy plain where dozens used to live.
"We were in the bathroom holding on to each other and holding on to dear life," Nail said. "If it wasn't for our concrete walls, our home would be gone like the rest of them."
Copyright 2011 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
TUSCALOOSA, Alabama (AP) — A wave of tornado-spawning storms strafed the South on Wednesday, splintering buildings across hard-hit Alabama and killing at least 77 people in four states.
Some 61 people died in Alabama alone, including 15 in Tuscaloosa when a massive tornado barreled through the area. Sections of the city that's home to the University of Alabama have been destroyed, the mayor said, and the city's infrastructure was devastated.
Farther north, a nuclear power plant west of Huntsville lost power and was operating on diesel generators. In Mississippi, 11 deaths were reported, four people were killed in Georgia and one in Tennessee.
A tornado moves through Tuscaloosa, Ala. Wednesday, April 27, 2011. A wave of severe storms laced with tornadoes strafed the South on Wednesday, killing at least 16 people around the region and splintering buildings across swaths of an Alabama university town. (AP Photo/The Tuscaloosa News, Dusty Compton)
In Tuscaloosa, news footage showed paramedics lifting a child out of a flattened home, with many neighboring buildings in the city of more than 83,000 also reduced to rubble. A hospital there said its emergency room had admitted about 100 people, but had treated some 400. Charts weren't even started for many patients because so many people were coming in at once. By midnight, only staff and patients were allowed inside.
"What we faced today was massive damage on a scale we have not seen in Tuscaloosa in quite some time," Mayor Walter Maddox told reporters, adding that he expected his city's death toll to rise.
The storm system spread destruction Tuesday night and Wednesday from Texas to Georgia, and it was forecast to hit the Carolinas next before moving further northeast.
President Barack Obama said he had spoken with Alabama Gov. Robert Bentley and approved his request for emergency federal assistance, including search and rescue assets.
"Our hearts go out to all those who have been affected by this devastation, and we commend the heroic efforts of those who have been working tirelessly to respond to this disaster," Obama said in a statement.
Around Tuscaloosa, traffic was snarled Wednesday night by downed trees and power lines, and some drivers abandoned their cars in medians. University officials said there didn't appear to be significant damage on campus, and dozens students and locals were staying at a 125-bed shelter in the campus recreation center.
Maddox said authorities were having trouble communicating, and 1,400 National Guard soldiers were being deployed around the state. The flashing lights of emergency vehicles could be seen on darkened streets all over town, and some were using winches to remove flipped vehicles from the roadside.
Storms struck Birmingham earlier in the day, felling numerous trees that impeded emergency responders and those trying to leave hard-hit areas. Surrounding Jefferson County reported 11 deaths by late Wednesday; another hard-hit area was Walker County with eight deaths. The rest of the deaths were scattered around the state, emergency officials said.
In Huntsville, meteorologists found themselves in the path of tornado and had to evacuate the National Weather Service office.
In Mississippi, a police officer was killed Wednesday morning when a towering sweetgum tree fell onto his tent as he shielded his young daughter with his body, said Kim Korthuis, a supervisory ranger with the National Park Service. The girl wasn't hurt.
By late Wednesday, the state's death toll had increased to 11 for the day, said Mississippi Emergency Management Association spokesman Jeff Rent. The governor also made an emergency declaration for much of the state.
Storms also killed two people in Georgia and one in Tennessee on Wednesday.
In eastern Tennessee, a woman was killed by falling trees in her trailer in Chattanooga. Just outside the city in Tiftonia, what appeared to be a tornado also struck at the base of the tourist peak Lookout Mountain.
Tops were snapped off trees and insulation and metal roof panels littered the ground. Police officers walked down the street, spray-painting symbols on houses they had checked for people who might be inside.
Copyright 2011 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
BEIRUT (AP) — Residents of the southern Syrian city of Daraa braved sniper fire Tuesday to pull the bullet-riddled bodies of the dead from the streets and hide them from security forces, a day after a brutal government crackdown on the popular revolt against President Bashar Assad, witnesses said.
As heavy gunfire reverberated through Daraa, a Syrian human rights group said authorities detained dozens of people across the country, mainly in several Damascus suburbs, including the town of Douma and in the northern coastal city of Jableh.
This video image taken from amateur video released by Sham News Network, a Syrian Freedom group, shows a man throwing an object at a tank in Daraa, Syria Sunday April 24, 2011. An eyewitness says at least five people have been killed in the southern Syrian city of Daraa during a security crackdown. Syrian troops in armored vehicles and tanks stormed the southern town of Daraa early Monday April 25, 2011 and opened fire. It was the latest bloodshed in a five-week uprising against President Bashar Assad's authoritarian regime. (AP Photo/Sham News Network via APTN) AP HAS NO WAY OF INDEPENDENTLY VERIFYING THE AUTHENTICITY OF THIS VIDEO
A relentless crackdown since mid-March has killed more than 400 people across Syria, with 120 dead over the weekend, rights groups said. That has only emboldened protesters who started their revolt with calls for modest reforms but are now increasingly demanding Assad's downfall.
The Syrian army, backed by tanks and snipers, launched a deadly raid before dawn Monday on Daraa, where the uprising began more than a month ago, and on the towns of Douma and Jableh. At least 22 people were killed in Daraa.
World leaders expressed concern at the mounting bloodshed, with the United States starting to draw up sanctions against Assad, diplomats hoping to send a strong signal to Damascus from the United Nations, and the prime minister of neighboring Turkey telephoning the Syrian leader to urge restraint.
The assault on Daraa appeared to be part of new strategy of crippling, pre-emptive action against any opposition to Assad, rather than reacting to demonstrations.
It took more than a day for residents of Daraa to start pulling many of the bodies off the streets of Daraa, with rooftop snipers and army forces firing on people who dared to leave their homes. One man, Zaher Ahmad Ayyash, was killed as he tried to retrieve the bodies of two brothers, Taysir and Yaser al-Akrad, said a resident, who asked to be identified only as Abdullah for fear of reprisal.
The corpses were hidden away after they were retrieved from the streets, Abdullah said, suggesting that residents might face reprisal if troops discovered they had taken the bodies. As he spoke on the phone, gunfire popping in the background.
"We can't bury the dead in the cemetery because it's occupied by Syrian soldiers," said Abdullah. "We are waiting to find another place to bury them."
Snipers also targeted water tanks on rooftops in Daraa — the last source of clean water for many desperate residents of the parched region of 300,000 people, Abdullah said.
Even as the military crackdown intensified, Abdullah said there was quiet, defiant resistance. He said some soldiers were disobeying orders and allowing residents to pass through military checkpoints.
Palestinian refugees — generally the most hardscrabble of all Syrian residents — smuggled flour, water, bread and canned food into town. "We are so grateful to them," the resident said.
Earlier in the day, another resident said Syrian special forces were in the streets of the impoverished city, and tanks had opened fire in the city.
"We are being subjected to a massacre," another resident screamed over the telephone above the sound of gunfire. "We have been without electricity for three days. We have no water."
The witness, contacted via a Jordanian cell phone, spoke on condition of anonymity for fear of reprisal, as did other witnesses and residents contacted across Syria.
Scenes similar to those in Daraa took place in Jableh, with residents hiding their dead from Friday's assault and then furtively burying them in private plots of farmland — some as late as Tuesday — out of fear that the families of those killed might be arrested, a resident said. Also like Daraa, gunmen had shot holes in water storage tanks on rooftops in a form of punishment, he added.
In a continuation of the crackdown, hundreds of people were arrested Tuesday, he said.
Syria has banned nearly all foreign media and restricted access to trouble spots since the uprising began, making it almost impossible to verify the dramatic events shaking one of the most authoritarian, anti-Western regimes in the Arab world.
In Douma, which saw an intense crackdown Monday, houses were raided again at dawn Tuesday, with forces detaining anyone suspected of participating in demonstrations. Soldiers at sandbagged checkpoints also held men deemed suspicious. Phone service was cut off, a resident said.
The streets of Douma were almost empty, with schools and most shops closed and uncollected garbage piling up. Security was heavy, with agents at checkpoints asking people for their identity cards.
Another resident said authorities closed the private Hamdan Hospital after ordering all families of patients there to take them home. No reason was given for the closure, and three doctors there were detained, the resident said.
In the seaside city of Banias, divided between Sunni Muslims and Alawites — the sect of the ruling Assad family and many key officials — thousands of men and women gathered in the streets for a demonstration, according to three residents. With the noise of chanting in the background, they said they wanted to show support for Daraa.
Life was almost back to normal in the central city of Homs, except for intense security, a witness said. A few hundred people demonstrated there Monday in support of Daraa, the witness said
Daraa has seen some of the worst bloodshed in the past five weeks as the uprising gained momentum. Recently, the city has absorbed many rural migrants who can no longer farm after years of drought.
The White House has stepped up its condemnation of Assad's regime, but stopped well short of demanding his ouster. U.S. officials said Washington has begun drawing up targeted sanctions against him, his family and his inner circle to boost pressure on them to halt the repression.
Washington was conferring with European countries and the United Nations about options.
British Foreign Secretary William Hague said Britain also was working with other members of the U.N. Security Council "to send a strong signal to the Syrian authorities that the eyes of the international community are on Syria." The U.N. will discuss Syria later Tuesday.
In Rome, Italian Premier Silvio Berlusconi and French President Nicolas Sarkozy expressed concern over the crackdown. Sarkozy said the current situation was "unacceptable."
The United States told all its nonessential staff and the families of all its embassy workers to leave the country, but kept the facility open for limited services. It also advised all Americans to defer travel to Syria and advised those already in the country to leave. On Sunday, Britain urged its citizens to leave Syria.
Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan called Assad and urged him to show "restraint." Turkey's ambassador met Syrian Prime Minister Adel Safar to express "deep concern and sorrow" over the many lives lost, the prime minister's office and the Turkish media reported.
The head of the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, Rami Abdul-Rahman, who provided the death toll of more than 400 people since the uprising began last month, said that figure did not include those killed in the raids on Daraa and the Damascus suburb of Douma. It also did not include the number of Syrian troops killed, he added.
Abdul-Rahman couldn't provide a precise figure for those arrested Tuesday because it was difficult to get through to Daraa after authorities cut telephone service in the city 80 miles (130 kilometers) south of Damascus, near the Jordanian border.
The uprising was touched off by the arrest of teenagers who scrawled anti-government graffiti on a wall, with protesters inspired by uprisings elsewhere in the Arab world.
Last week, Assad fulfilled a key demand by abolishing nearly 50-year-old emergency laws that had given the regime a free hand to arrest people without cause. But he coupled the concession with a stern warning that people would no longer have an excuse to hold mass protests, and any further unrest would be considered "sabotage."
When protesters defied his order and held demonstrations Friday — the main day for rallies around the Arab world — they were met with a gunfire, tear gas and stun guns.
The attack on Daraa was by far the biggest in scope and firepower. Video purportedly shot by activists showed tanks rolling through streets and grassy fields with soldiers on foot jogging behind them.
State-run television quoted a military source as saying army units entered the city to bring security "answering the pleas for help by residents of Daraa."
Syria has a pivotal role in most of the flashpoint issues of the Middle East — from the Arab-Israeli peace process to Iran's widening influence. Instability has thrown into disarray the U.S. push for engagement with Damascus, part of Washington's hopes to peel the country away from Hamas, Hezbollah and Tehran.
Copyright 2011 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
What happens when you cross the world's largest social network with one of the hottest business models in e-commerce? Facebook wants to find out.
Facebook is launching a deals program Tuesday in five U.S. cities, following on the popularity of Groupon and other services that offer deep discounts — for example: $50 worth of food at a local eatery for $25.
By allowing small businesses to leverage the Internet while helping consumers score great deals, these group-couponing services have become some of the fastest-growing businesses in the world.
Facebook now wants a part of that. It hopes to exploit its existing networks of friends and family when it begins testing offers in San Diego, San Francisco, Atlanta, Dallas and Austin, Texas.
Many deals sites have a social component. For instance, if you get three friends to buy a LivingSocial voucher, yours is free. Groupon's offers become valid only after a certain number of people purchase them.
FILE - In this Feb. 11, 2011 photo, a Facebook page
is seen on a computer in Montpelier, Vt. Following on the
popularity of sites like Groupon, Facebook is launching its
own daily deals program Tuesday, April 26, 2011 in five
U.S. cities. The social network hopes to exploit the peer-to-peer
aspect of group buying when it begins testing offers in San Diego,
San Francisco, Austin, Atlanta and Dallas. (AP Photo/Toby Talbot, File)
But the deals are circulated to users through email, and the community aspect is secondary.
Facebook is hoping to change that.
"We're building a product that is social from the ground up," says Emily White, director of local for Facebook. "All of these deals are things you want to do with friends, so no teeth whitening, but yes to river rafting."
Starting Tuesday, when Facebook users in the five test markets log into the site, they will see a deals insignia at the bottom of the page.
Clicking on it brings up a list of currently available offers. A user can buy one, click the "like" button to recommend it to others or share the offer with friends through Facebook's private messaging system. When users purchase or "like" a deal, it shows up in their friends' news feed.
That means "the discovery of the product can happen in lots of different places," White says.
To get the program started, Facebook has enlisted 11 companies that already supply deals elsewhere. Restaurant reservation service OpenTable will broadcast offers for local eateries, while online ticket seller Viagogo will market events.
Not all offers involve discounts. Some are experiences people may not otherwise have access to, such as a backstage pass to Austin City Limits concerts, a tour of the Dallas Cowboys' new stadium, or a children's sleepover at the California Academy of Sciences in San Francisco with live-snake demos.
In some cases, you'll get a "friend bonus" — an additional discount — if at least one other person in your social network buys a deal.
Leveraging social tools and direct sharing among friends will be "a key to success for daily deal companies" going forward, says Lou Kerner, social media analyst at Wedbush.
This is not the first time a social network has made a foray into disseminating deals. Twitter launched its own daily deal program called Earlybird Offers last year but canceled it after just two months. Last November Facebook launched a product called Check-in Deals that allowed users to "check in" via their mobile phones when they visit certain businesses and in turn receive discounts and other special offers. Location-based social network Foursquare has a similar program.
Offers through Facebook can last anywhere from a day to a week. The social network won't disclose how much commission it takes. (With Groupon and others, the deal site typically takes up to half the revenue.)
There are hundreds of Groupon copycats willing to accept lower commissions, but many small businesses prefer to partner with larger companies such as Groupon and LivingSocial because they reach more potential customers.
Facebook will bring deals to even more people. While Groupon has 70 million members and LivingSocial has 28 million, Facebook has 500 million people worldwide.
Add to that the fact that many small businesses already have a Facebook presence, and the social network becomes a good fit for daily deals, says Greg Sterling, senior analyst for Opus Research.
As a share of overall Web surfing, visits to group-buying sites grew ten-fold over the past year, according to research firm Experian. LivingSocial had 7 million unique visitors in March, up 27 percent from February, making it one of the 10 fastest-growing websites in the U.S., according to ComScore.
"Groupon and LivingSocial have shown how much demand there is out there," Sterling says. "Facebook, if they do this right, can have a big hit on their hands."
Copyright 2011 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
Yes I know that Flickr offers a dinky Facebook Newsfeed sync and there are plenty of other services that offer pretty complex Flickr photo-syncing tools, but this post is for the three of you that want to prevent this from happening to you and don’t have 20 minutes to spend figuring it out.
My attempts to sync my Flickr photos to Facebook manually through Facebook Activity Updates are still loading so I’m just going use that time to write about a faster and more effective way to do this.
Created by Paul Carduner, PhotoSync allows you to sync all or a few of your Flickr albums to Facebook and doesn’t take an eternity. The service partions large versions of your Flickr photos and albums into matching Facebook albums and keeps syncing both accounts every hour, with no effort on your part.
Unfortunately PhotoSync doesn’t import the Flickr Pro photo hostages, but for that TechCrunch reader Gaurav Sharma has a work around:
The Facebook Like button celebrated its 1st anniversary this week, on April 21st. It’s ubiquity makes it hard to believe that it was a little over a year ago when Mark Zuckerberg took the stage at the third annual f8 Developers Conference to announce the button, which is now integrated with around 2.5 million websites worldwide, with 10,000 new ones being added daily.
While the anniversary of the conference came and went with nary a peep from Facebook, judging by this “f8 partnerships” Facebook Group, there will be an f8 in 2011 (Facebook has confirmed). It’ll be interesting to watch that “f8 partnerships” page in the coming months, to see who, if anyone, gets added from outside the company.
Up until now the f8 scheduling has been somewhat erratic (missing 2009 entirely). There have been a total of three f8s so far, the first one happening on May 24th, 2007, the second happening on July 23rd, 2008 and the third one happening between April 21-22 in 2010. In the meantime Facebook has grown from 24 million active users to almost 700 million.
While the conference typically happens in the summer, Facebook has yet to confirm an actual date for 2011 saying only that it’ll keep me posted. Judging by this year’s latency in announcement time, it’s probable that it will be held in late summer, I’m guessing sometime between July and August.
As AllThingsD’s Liz Gannes reports, Twitter has elected to shelveits Chirp conference this year while Google is once again over achieving with a sold out i/o in May. If developer conferences were like college, Facebook would be like the brilliant student who turned in their work late, but turned it in beautifully.
HONG KONG -- The makers of 3D Sex and Zen: Extreme Ecstasy are presenting Singapore with a heavily self-censored release with more than 18 minutes of the completed film cut, executive producer Stephen Shiu Jr. told The Hollywood Reporter. The film is repped by Shiu’s own One Dollar Distribution at Filmart.
Obliging the demand for the Singapore distributor to follow the strict censorship and conservative culture in there, executive producer Shiu and director Christopher Sun have sliced off scenes of group sex, oral sex, sadomasochism, and those linking religion and sex to assemble a tamer, 110-minute version for the audience aged 21 or above in the territory.
“We have to trim the major parts of a scene of a female character seducing a monk,” said Shiu, adding “no physical contact is allowed between a woman and a person in a religious order. We’re told that any portrayal of religion and portrayal of sex must be separate.” The same version will be released in India.
Three minutes of footage depicting group sex has been left on the cutting floor for the South Korean edition.
The film has also captured the attention of the rest of the world.
The $3 million 3D erotica promises to push the boundaries of public decency and sensory stimulation with “edge of the bed” action in stereoscopic 3D. Rights have been sold to Singapore, India, South Korea, Australia, New Zealand, Italy, France, Peru, and Russia. The enthusiastic international demand serves as compensation for not having the lucrative Chinese market – the filmmakers had ruled out any possibility of bringing the film into China from the outset.
The Hong Kong theatrical version of the period sex romp is set and approved for release on April 14 at 118 minutes, but a full 129-minute director’s cut has been made. The producers will decide whether to release it in Hong Kong cinemas depending on public demand and local censors, or on DVD; European distributors can choose between the two versions. Advance tickets to the film in Hong Kong went on sale in mid-March, with more than 5,000 tickets already sold in Hong Kong; Shui said he has received orders of up to 100,000 tickets from Chinese mainland tourists coming to Hong Kong during the film’s release.
3D Sex and Zen is a reimagining of the 1991 Category III hit Sex and Zen, produced by Shiu’s father Stephen Shiu Sr., which broke records with more than HK$20 million ($2.6 million) at the box office and ushered in an era of Category III erotica in the 1990s. Shiu Sr. produced and wrote the script for the 3D update.
As executive producer, Shui Jr. described the film, in all its versions, as “bolder and more graphic than 9 1⁄2 Weeks, but not to the level of Caligula.” He also believed 3D is the perfect format for erotica: “From the first time I came to know this genre, I’ve hoped I could watch it in 3D.”
The film was shot with RED digital 4K cameras and postproduction was done by Hong Kong’s Digital Magic, which was previously involved in Hong Kong’s first 3D horror film, Universe’s Child’s Eye 3D. The film is now pending approval from IMAX to release as IMAX 3D. Shiu said the company is concerned about the subject matter and genre, which has never been associated with IMAX before.
Originally touted as the world’s first stereoscopic 3D erotica at its announcement in January 2009, 3D Sex and Zen was beaten to the screen by South Korea’s Natali from director Joo Kyung-jung. That film was announced in June 2010, filmed from last May through September, and released last October. Shiu was unreserved in his fury for being pre-empted: “I think that is despicable behavior. The makers of Natali rushed their production to steal our thunder. But at the end, the audience voted with their feet. That film was a failure everywhere it was released.”
HONG KONG – 3D Sex and Zen: Extreme Ecstasy beat Avatar and Lust, Caution as it smashed records as the highest 3D debut in Hong Kong and reclaimed its crown as the highest-grossing Category III film opening.
The locally produced 3D erotica raked in HK$2.79 million ($360,000) on its first day, according to the Hong Kong Motion Pictures Industry Association. The film was touted as the world’s first stereoscopic 3D softcore porn before the honor was usurped by South Korea’s Natali, released last year. The opening box office result of 3D Sex and Zen trumped James Cameron’s 3D extravaganza Avatar’s HK$2.5 million opening gross in 2009, and more than doubled the HK$1.2 million opening of Lust, Caution.
The latter triumph was particularly sweet for the producers of 3D Sex and Zen, as previously, Lust, Caution broke the record held for 17 years as the highest-grossing Category III, or adults-only, Chinese-language film with sexual content, pushing out the original 1991 Sex and Zen, also from the new version’s producer Stephen Shiu Sr. Ang Lee’s 2007 spy thriller grossed HK$49 million to become the top Category III film of all time in Hong Kong, overtaking Sex and Zen’s HK$20 million, while Avatar eventually grossed over HK$180 million, the top-grossing film of all time in the territory, in 3D or otherwise.
Producers had set aside “lady’s house” women-only screenings of the film on two screens, which proved popular as well and were sold out. But the film’s box office earning power should have legs for the upcoming May 1 Chinese holiday, as Chinese tourists to Hong Kong are expected to squeeze in a screening of the 3D erotic film during their visit to Hong Kong. Shiu Sr. made the film knowing it wouldn’t pass the censors in China. Chinese tourists also flocked to see the full version of Lust, Caution in Hong Kong, which boosted the general gross of the film here.
LATEST BEIRUT (AP) — Witnesses and human rights groups say the death toll has risen to 27 as Syrian security forces fire live bullets and tear gas on protesters. Protesters flooded into the streets after Muslim prayers in at least five major areas across the country. It's a sign that President Bashar Assad's attempts to quell the monthlong protests with a deadly crackdown and promises of reform have all but failed. Witnesses say an 11-year-old boy was among the dead. They spoke on condition of anonymity for fear of reprisals. The protest movement has been the gravest challenge against the autocratic regime led by Assad, who inherited power from his father 11 years ago in one of the most rigidly controlled countries in the Middle East.
PREVIOUS BEIRUT (AP) — Syrian security forces fired live bullets and tear gas Friday on pro-democracy demonstrations across the country, killing at least 15 people — including a young boy — as the uprising against President Bashar Assad's authoritarian regime defied a deadly security crackdown, witnesses said.
A Syrian protestor shouts slogans as he burns a poster of Syrian President Bashar Assad during a demonstration in front of the Syrian embassy, in Nicosia, Cyprus Friday, April 22, 2011. Several hundred Syria protesters resident in Cyprus, have called for Syrian President Bashar Assad's ouster. (AP Photo/Petros Karadjias)
Protesters flooded into the streets after Muslim prayers in at least five major areas across the country, a sign that Assad's attempts to quell the monthlong protests with a deadly crackdown and promises of reform have all but failed.
"Bullets started flying over our heads like heavy rain," said one witness in Izraa, a southern village in Daraa province, the same region where the uprising kicked off in mid-March.
The protest movement has been the gravest challenge against the autocratic regime led by Assad, who inherited power from his father 11 years ago in one of the most rigidly controlled countries in the Middle East.
Tens of thousands of people were protesting in the Damascus suburb of Douma, the central city of Homs, Banias on the coast, the northeastern Kurdish region and the southern province of Daraa, where the uprising kicked off in mid-March.
Witnesses said they saw at least five corpses at the Hamdan hospital outside the capital. All suffered gunshot wounds.
In the southern province of Daraa, other witnesses said at least 10 people were killed when protesters marched in front of the mayor's office in Izraa. They said an 11-year-old boy was among the dead.
"Among the dead was Anwar Moussa, who was shot in the head. He was 11," said the witness.
The witnesses spoke on condition of anonymity for fear of reprisals.
The protest movement has crossed a significant threshold in recent days, with increasing numbers now seeking the downfall of the regime, not just reforms. The security crackdown has only emboldened protesters, who are enraged over the deaths of more than 200 people over five weeks.
Friday's witness accounts could not be independently confirmed because Syria has expelled journalists and restricted access to trouble spots. Witnesses spoke on condition of anonymity for fear of reprisals.
Activists promised that Friday's protests will be the biggest rallies yet against the regime led by Assad, who inherited power from his father 11 years ago in one of the most authoritarian countries in the Middle East.
The president has been trying to defuse the protests by launching a bloody crackdown along with a series of concessions, most recently lifting emergency laws that gave authorities almost boundless powers of surveillance and arrest.
He also has fulfilled a decades-old demand by granting citizenship to thousands among Syria's long-ostracized Kurdish minority, fired local officials, released detainees and formed a new government.
But many protesters said the concessions have come too late — and that Assad does not deserve the credit.
"The state of emergency was brought down, not lifted," prominent Syrian activist Suhair Atassi, who was arrested several times in the past, wrote on her Twitter page. "It is a victory as a result of demonstrations, protests and the blood of martyrs who called for Syria's freedom."
Earlier Friday, witnesses said security forces in uniform and plainclothes set up checkpoints around the Damascus suburb of Douma, checking peoples identity cards and preventing nonresidents from going in.
Syria stands in the middle of the most volatile conflicts in region because of its alliances with militant groups like Lebanon's Hezbollah and with Shiite powerhouse Iran. That has given Damascus a pivotal role in most of the flashpoint issues of the region, from the Arab-Israeli peace process to Iran's widening influence.
If the regime in Syria wobbles, it also throws into disarray the U.S. push for engagement with Damascus, part of Washington's plan to peel the country away from its allegiance to Hamas, Hezbollah and Tehran.
Copyright 2011 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
At least 23 people have died and dozens are missing after a ferry carrying more than 100 passengers capsized in a river in eastern Bangladesh.
Photo: BBC
The ferry went down after hitting the wreckage of another ferry in the Meghna river in Brahmanbaria, 80km (50 miles) from the capital, Dhaka, police said. Many passengers were able to swim ashore to safety.
But rescuers said the toll was expected to rise with some passengers believed to be trapped inside the ferry. Ferry accidents are fairly common on Bangladesh's vast river network and scores are killed every year. Most are blamed on poor safety standards and overcrowding.
A team of divers from Dhaka was searching for more bodies and survivors. Officials said a second team of divers was on their way from the capital.
"Divers are trying to retrieve more bodies from the sunken ferry," news agency Reuters quoted senior police official Zahurul Islam Khan as saying from the scene. Anxious relatives and onlookers have gathered at the scene of the accident.
Last June, about a dozen people died after a packed ferry capsized in storms in north-east Bangladesh.
In November 2009, 118 people were killed in two ferry accidents within a week.
FUTABA, Japan (AP) — Residents rushed back into the 12-mile (20-kilometer) evacuation zone around Japan's radiation-spewing nuclear power plant Thursday, grabbing whatever belongings they could before an order went into effect legally banning entry to the area.
A man wearing a protective suit walks along a street in deserted town of Futaba, inside the 20-kilometer (12-mile) evacuation zone, in Fukushima Prefecture, Japan, Thursday, April 21, 2011. Japan declared the 20-kilometer (12-mile) area evacuated around its radiation-spewing nuclear power plant a no-go zone on Thursday, urging residents to abide by the order for their own safety or possibly face fines or detention. (AP Photo/Sergey Ponomarev)
A stream of evacuees ventured into deserted towns near the plant, some in white protective suits and others in face masks and rain gear they hoped would protect against radiation. Most raced through the zone with car windows closed, their vehicles crammed with clothing and valuables.
"This is our last chance, but we aren't going to stay long. We are just getting what we need and getting out," said Kiyoshi Kitajima, an X-ray technician, who dashed to his hospital in Futaba, a town next-door to the plant, to collect equipment before the order went into effect at midnight.
Officials said the order announced Thursday was meant to limit exposure to radiation leaking from the plant and to prevent thefts. Almost all the zone's nearly 80,000 residents left when the area was evacuated on March 12, but police had not been able to legally block them from going back.
Police had no estimate Thursday of the exact number of people who have returned to the zone or who still might be living there.
Under a special nuclear emergency law, people who enter the zone will now be subject to fines of up to 100,000 yen ($1,200) or possible detention of up to 30 days. Up to now, defiance of the evacuation order was not punishable by law.
The order angered some residents who fled their homes nearly empty-handed when they were told to evacuate after last month's tsunami and earthquake wrecked the Fukushima Dai-ichi plant's power and cooling systems.
"I initially thought we would be able to return within a few days. So I brought nothing except a bank card," said Kazuko Suzuki, 49, also from Futaba.
"I really want to go back. I want to check if our house is still there," said Suzuki, who fled with her teenage son and daughter. "My patience has run out. I just want to go home."
The no-go order was not due to any particular change in conditions inside the plant, which appear to have somewhat stabilized. Even under the best-case scenario, however, the plant's operator says it will take at least six months to bring its reactors safely into a cold shutdown.
Chief Cabinet Secretary Yukio Edano said authorities would arrange brief visits, allowing one person per household to return by bus for a maximum of two hours to collect necessary belongings. Participants would have to go through radiation screening, he said.
"We beg the understanding of residents. We really want residents not to enter the areas," Edano told reporters. "Unfortunately, there are still some people in the areas."
Residents chafed at the limit to just one person per household.
No visits will be allowed in a two mile (three kilometer) area closest to the plant, said Hidehiko Nishiyama of Japan's Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency, confirming reports that zone would be completely off-limits.
Details were still being worked out.
Katsunobu Sakurai, mayor of Minami Soma, where about half the 71,000 residents lived in areas that will now be off-limits, questioned the rationale for the way the evacuation zone was decided.
"It feels like some outsider who doesn't know anything about our geography sat at a desk and drew these circles," Sakurai said. "The zones have zero scientific basis. Radiation doesn't travel in neat circles. Just putting up circles around the plant is unreasonable."
Prime Minister Naoto Kan, who has been under fire from the opposition over the government's handling of the crisis, visited the region Thursday, giving a giving a pep talk to workers at a nuclear crisis management center in Fukushima.
Fukushima's governor, who has also been critical of the government's performance, said he urged Kan to ensure the government properly handles the disaster and related compensation issues.
"I told the prime minister that I strongly hope that evacuees can return home as early as possible," said the governor, Yuhei Sato.
Meanwhile, new data from Japan's National Police Agency showed that two-thirds of the victims identified in last month's earthquake and tsunami were elderly — and almost all of them drowned.
The agency said 65 percent of the 11,108 confirmed fatalities of known age were 60 or older. Another 1,899 victims were of unknown age.
Adding those who are still missing, the earthquake and resulting tsunami killed an estimated 27,500 people. The police agency said nearly 93 percent of the victims had drowned. Others perished in fires, were crushed to death or died from other causes.
The northeastern coast hardest hit by the disasters had a high concentration of elderly residents.
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TRIPOLI, Libya (AP) — A Libyan rebel leader said Thursday that opposition forces have control of a post on the Tunisian border near a former rebel-held town, which could open a new channel for anti-government forces in Moammar Gadhafi's bastion in western Libya.
In the rebel stronghold of Benghazi in eastern Libya, meanwhile, relief workers and medical teams awaited the arrival of a passenger ferry carrying about 1,000 people — mostly Libyan civilians and workers from Asia and Africa — out of the besieged city of Misrata, the main rebel holdout in Gadhafi's territory.
Libyan rebel fighters guard at a checkpoint at the streets of Misrata, Libya Wednesday, April 20, 2011. Inside the besieged city of Misrata, spent rockets protrude from the pavement of a parking lot, unarmed teenagers prepare plastic crates of Molotov cocktails, and fighters at roadblocks sit inside empty shipping containers outfitted with furniture, carpets and generator-powered TVs and watch Al-Jazeera reports of their war with Moammar Gadhafi. (AP Photo/Nasser Nasser)
Also aboard the vessel were the bodies of an Oscar-nominated documentary maker from Britain and an American photographer who were killed covering clashes Wednesday. A day earlier, the ferry arrived in Misrata, delivering food and medical supplies to the beleaguered population.
The reported capture of the border crossing followed three days of intense fighting outside the desert town of Nalut, about 140 miles (240 kilometers) southwest of the capital Tripoli, said a rebel leader, Shaban Abu Sitta. The area was in hands of anti-government forces last month before Libyan troops moved in.
Holding the Dhuheiba border crossing could open important supply routes for anti-Gadhafi forces and give the rebels another foothold in western Libya. The claim could not be independently verified. Moammar Gadhafi's forces have sharply restricted the movement of journalists in the areas they control in western Libya.
"Rebels are now manning Dhuheiba crossing," said Abu Sitta, who claimed his fighters destroyed 30 army pickup trucks and captured 10 cars and some weapons.
On the Ionian Spirit ferry — part of a maritime lifeline to Misrata — Libyan civilians and migrants workers packed the decks, hallways and every other available space. In the ship's Panorama Bar, evacuees tossed mattresses onto the wooden dance floor. Women slipped behind a curtain to change.
The injured were brought to the lower level of the ship, where an 11-member medical team set up a makeshift intensive care unit.
Jeremy Haslam, a coordinator from the Geneva-based International Organization for Migration, said the boat has more than 1,000 evacuees including 239 Libyan civilians and 586 migrants from Niger and others from Africa and Asia.
He said some Libyans tried to flee Misrata aboard a tug boat, but were turned away because the vessel was overcrowded. Some managed to get aboard the ferry.
"We are carrying more than we are supposed to but it's better than letting these people leave on a tugboat," said Haslam.
The number of people seeking to flee Misrata has surged as Libyan forces expand their shelling to areas once considered relatively safe havens from attacks.
"Our neighborhood became a war zone so we had to get out," said Faiza Stayta, who made it aboard the ferry with her husband and two children. "All the firing is random. You hear a rocket and how have no idea if it will come down on your house."
The vessel carried the bodies of Chris Hondros, a New York-based photographer for Getty Images, and British-born Tim Hetherington, co-director of the 2010 Afghanistan war documentary "Restrepo" that was nominated for an Academy Award. The film was co-directed by Sebastian Junger, author of "The Perfect Storm."
They were killed Wednesday in an attack that also injured two other photographers. A statement from Hetherington's family said he was killed by a rocket-propelled grenade. The ship also held the body of a Ukrainian doctor killed Wednesday from an artillery blast, said Haslam of the IOM.
The group is planning to send another ship to Misrata carrying 500 tons of food and medical supplies. The IOM said it has evacuated more than 3,100 people from Misrata.
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