Judge: Jolie didn't steal 'Blood and Honey' story

By Eriq Gardner, The Hollywood Reporter

Matt Sayles / ASSOCIATED PRESS

Angelina Jolie has been declared the winner in a lawsuit that alleges she stole work by Croatian journalist?James Braddock to create her directorial debut, "In the Land of Blood and Honey."

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The actress was sued just weeks before "Blood and Honey" hit theaters in late 2011. Braddock alleged that the film about a love affair during the?Bosnian Civil War violates his copyright on a book, "The Soul Shattering." According to Braddock's lawsuit, one of the film's producers, Edin Sarkic, who has been credited in the press with helping Jolie attain the necessary permits to film in?Sarajevo, had read "The Soul Shattering" and had discussions over the possibility of creating a film adaptation of the book.

But according to a tentative decision by U.S. District Judge Dolly Gee, the works are not substantially similar, and a result, Braddock has been ordered to show cause why the action should not be dismissed with prejudice.

UPDATE: The decision has now been made final. Read the ruling in full here.

Braddock's book "Slamanje Duse" was published in 2007, and it came out in shorter form in English under the title, "The Soul Shattering." ?His work is set in 1992 in a small Bosnian village and features a Croat who is married to a Muslim when their lives are interrupted by war. Ultimately, the strength of their love brings them back together.

Gee wrote, "Although 'Blood and Honey' is also a story of love, it highlights the complications of romantic love during wartime" between its protagonists -- a Muslim artist and a Serbian military soldier.

When analyzing the plot and sequence of both works, Gee noted some of the similarities including the fact that both include escape sequences and brutal rape scenes. But that's not enough. The judge says Braddock can't have claimed to have "invented the concept of rape as a war crime" and says that whatever similarities there are in this regard don't rise to substantial similarity, "particularly in light of the fact that those overlapping concepts are commonplace in books and films depicting war."

Similarly, when analyzing theme, the judge admits some similarity but stresses the differences. "'Blood and Honey' is primarily a story of betrayal, revenge and tragedy with little or no hope, while 'Slamanje Duse' focuses on family, love and strength."

In the decision, the judge continued by exploring dialogue, the mood and the characters of both works. Parallels were drawn and then rejected as falling short.

Braddock certainly is not the first to fail in making a case for copyright infringement. Many writers have sued Hollywood studios, and judges often place the bar quite high for plaintiffs to demonstrate substantial similarity. Ideas aren't protected, only expression. And then, there are limits to that. For example, the judge pointed out that "'Slamanje Duse' is based on the experiences of a real person and historical facts" but that certain details aren't entitled to copyright protection. That both works take place during the Bosnian War, which the judge notes is "a historical event that is well documented and widely known," doesn't really get Braddock anywhere in his claims that now seem destined to fail.

Jolie and other defendants were represented by Harrison Dossick and Christine Neuharth at Reed Smith.

?The Court?s tentative ruling was thorough and well reasoned," Dossick tells THR. "We are hopeful the court will adopt it in full when the final order is issued.?

Related content:

Source: http://todayentertainment.today.com/_news/2013/04/01/17551335-judge-angelina-jolie-did-not-steal-story-for-in-the-land-of-blood-and-honey?lite

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Caroline Kennedy returns to poetry for 10th book

NEW YORK (AP) -- Beginning work a few years ago on her latest book, an anthology of poems for young people, Caroline Kennedy found herself looking through one of her mother's scrapbooks. She burst into laughter, she says, as she came across a poem that her brother John, as a youngster, had picked out and copied as a gift to their poetry-loving mom.

"Willie with a thirst for gore, Nailed his sister to the door," went the poem, by an unknown author. "Mother said with humor quaint, 'Careful, Willie, don't scratch the paint!'"

The poem "brought back memories of our relationship," Kennedy told a bookstore audience this week. "I laughed so hard."

But for Kennedy, now 55 and a mother of three grown children, there's a deeper meaning to that irreverent ditty. Poetry was a central part of her home life growing up. She and John regularly copied out and illustrated poems for their mother, Jackie, upon birthdays and Mother's Days. Sometimes, they'd recite them too, "if we were feeling competitive." And at family gatherings with their grandmother, there were frequent challenges to recite Henry Wadsworth Longfellow's famous (and famously lengthy) "Paul Revere's Ride." Only Uncle Ted, it seems, was able to recite it in its entirety.

Now, with her 10th book, Kennedy wants to share with young readers the love for the written word that she feels her poetry-filled childhood helped instill in her (even though her own son, she quips, hates reading and only likes two poems.) Hence the title: "Poems to Learn By Heart."

"It was a combination of remembering my own childhood and thinking about gifts I'd been given," she said in an interview last week at her husband's downtown Manhattan design firm, explaining the genesis of the latest book. "And working in schools and seeing the role that poetry can play in kids' lives."

It's also an effort to promote literacy, a cause Kennedy has supported in a number of ways. "Fourteen percent of American adults can't read," Kennedy says. "It's a slow-motion disaster." She believes poetry can help. "Kids need a way in," she says, "and reading needs to be fun. Poetry can give them that ? with the current emphasis on poetry slams, and these other open mic events. That's actually why I think poetry has a chance."

Kennedy's current book ? a collection of poems from various authors, with introductions by her to each section, and vivid illustrations by John J Muth ? is her fourth to focus on poetry. Her earlier books, especially "The Best Loved Poems of Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis," have been huge sellers, pulling in numbers unheard of for poetry anthologies.

"She's committed to becoming an advocate for the written word and poetry in particular," says Gretchen Young, who edited all of Kennedy's poetry books at Hyperion, working with the author to cull down huge numbers of beloved poems. "And she knows she can do that."

As to what else Kennedy can do with her high profile ? and the unique and powerful celebrity status she's held since she was a little girl in the Kennedy White House ? that is a question that people never cease to ask. The latest rumor has her up for an ambassadorship, perhaps to Japan, perhaps to Canada. Asked about those rumors during a recent TV appearance, she responded with typical restraint: "I'd love to serve in any way." She added that she hadn't been asked yet, and her response is still "No comment."

But many expect Kennedy, who considered seeking an appointment to the Senate from New York in 2009 but then withdrew her name from contention amid a flurry of publicity, to take up some high-profile position in the near future. She was an important and avid supporter of President Barack Obama, both in the 2008 and the 2012 elections.

"I'm really glad he's president," she says now when asked how he's doing, giving him high marks particularly in the field of education. "He can't do all the things he'd like to. We have a lot of problems. That's why I want young people to get engaged."

For now, though, Kennedy is making her mark in different ways. She is president of the John F. Kennedy Library Association, and in May will present the Profile in Courage award to former Arizona congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords. She still participates in fundraising activities for the New York City public schools, and is joining Laura Bush and Lynda Bird Johnson Robb to help the Library of Congress promote literacy through a new awards program, along with other authors, publishers and scholars.

Another pet project: Libraries, which she says are still critical places for young people to learn analytical skills. She's the honorary chair of National Library Week next month. "I'm into things that are dying out," she quips, then adds that actually they're not: "My son goes to the library all the time (at college.) There's a lot more socializing at the library than you think."

And she hints that she'll be writing other books, though not on poetry. "I think I'm pretty much done with the poetry books," she says. "I haven't figured out the next thing yet."

In any case, her attention to poetry has been a boon for all poets, says Stephen Young, program director at the Poetry Foundation, based in Chicago. "Selling poetry is, for most poets, a challenge," Young says. "It certainly helps when someone like Caroline Kennedy, who has an earnest and genuine interest in poetry, puts together these anthologies."

And while many might think that in this world of tweets and texts, the art of poetry is slowly dying out, the truth is that it seems to be on the upswing among young people, Young says ? partly because of poetry slams and the like, but also due to the Internet. "People can read AND listen to poems on the Web," Young notes.

And clearly, kids like to recite out loud. Along with the National Endowment for the Arts, the poetry foundation sponsors Poetry Out Loud, a contest similar to the National Spelling Bee. In 2006, there were 40,000 participants. This year's contest, which will hold its finals in Washington, D.C., in April, has 375,000, Young says.

It all speaks, in his view, to the fact that "poems are meant to be shared." Kennedy says this too; In her book, along with more famous poems, she includes "Voices Rising," a collaborative poem by students on the "slam team" at DreamYard Prep, a Bronx school Kennedy became familiar with in her work with public schools. Those students contributed ideas to the book, and three of them recited their poem together at Kennedy's kickoff reading last week at Barnes & Noble in New York.

Speaking of young people, Kennedy asked each of her own three kids ? Rose and Tatiana, who have finished college, and Jack, who is still there ? to contribute a favorite poem to her new book. (Tatiana, the "bookworm" according to her mother, translated a poem from Ovid's Metamorphoses, from the original Latin.) But she herself has trouble picking her favorite.

Asked by an audience member at her book reading to do just that, though, she settled on "Don't Worry if Your Job is Small."

"Don't worry if your job is small, and your rewards are few," it says.

"Remember that the mighty oak, was once a nut like you."

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/caroline-kennedy-returns-poetry-10th-122815777.html

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284,000 College Graduates Had Minimum-Wage Jobs Last Year

A college degree doesn?t guarantee anyone a big paycheck anymore.

About 284,000 Americans with college degrees were working minimum wage jobs last year, according to the Wall Street Journal. That?s 70 percent more college grads working for the minimum wage than 10 years ago. Still, the number is down from its 2010 high of 327,000.

As unemployment skyrocketed during the economic downturn, job opportunities for everyone -- including college graduates -- narrowed and low-wage work began to replace steady middle-class jobs. Three-fifths of the jobs lost during the recession paid middle-income wages, while the same share of the jobs created during the recovery are low-wage work, according to an August study from the National Employment Law Project.

The result: Nearly half of the college graduates in the class of 2010 are working in jobs that don?t require a bachelor?s degree and 38 percent have jobs that don?t even require a high school diploma, according to a January report from the Center for College Affordability and Productivity. The report called into question whether too much public money is being spent on providing students with degrees that make them overqualified for the only jobs that are available.

But it?s not only the government shouldering the cost of a college degree. Household student loan debt soared to a record in 2010, with nearly one in five American households burdened with college debt. And with the weak job market, recent graduates are going to have an increasingly tough time paying that debt off. The median wage for those with a bachelor?s degree is down from a decade ago, according to the Associated Press.

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Source: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/03/31/college-graduates-minimum-wage-jobs_n_2989540.html

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Self Hypnosis for Healthy Weight Loss - Hypnosis Black Secrets

Wanting to lose weight is one of the most common issues addressed by hypnotherapists, as well as more traditional counselors. While the issue appears simple on the surface, there are often complex psychological reasons behind an individual?s overeating, sedentary lifestyle or poor food choices.

Thankfully, a great deal of these issues can be worked on at home, by yourself, using the power of self-hypnosis! Here you?ll find some general guidelines to identifying and then working through your unique obstacles to fitness.

Setting the Mood

As with any self-hypnosis session, begin by creating the most comfortable space you can, free of distractions and filled with soothing sensations, sounds and scents.

Identifying the Issues

Using your favorite self-hypnosis induction technique, place yourself in trance. Once you?re there, simply ask your subconscious what is keeping you from your ideal healthy weight. This is not as simple as it sounds. You?ll probably find that, at least in the beginning, your conscious mind ?jumps in? with tons of rationalizations.

You may feel that you?re doomed to be overweight because of a family history. You might have no energy for exercise. You may even feel that you eat and exercise a healthy amount but still can?t keep the weight off.

Throughout this ?conscious mind chatter,? try to discern the messages your subconscious is sending you. The subconscious is like a computer ? it can?t lie. It only repeats information it has been given.

If you truly and subconsciously believe something false regarding your weight, make a note of this and end your session. Write down each false belief as soon as you?re done, making any notes or observations you picked up along the way. Study these beliefs and determine ways to tackle them individually. False beliefs are often easily addressed through self-hypnotic suggestions and conscious affirmations. Write these down as well. Refer to the list in future sessions and keep your affirmations in a handy place where you will see it several times each day. Imagine that you falsely believe that you are ?doomed? to be overweight. Refute this false belief with an affirmation such as ?I am in complete control of my health, appearance and weight.?

Future Sessions and Affrimations

Repeat your affirmations as often as possible. Whenever possible, do this in front of a mirror with a genuine smile on your face and conviction in your voice. Over time, these very true and positive statements will sink into your subconscious mind as fact. Remember to always word affirmations positively (avoid using words like ?can?t,? ?won?t,? ?don?t,? ?not? or ?shouldn?t,?) and in the present tense (?I am healthy? instead of ?I will be healthy?).

In future self-hypnosis sessions, utilize a combination of visualization and commands to retrain your subconscious mind. You may find the ?floating bubble? visualization very helpful, in which you wade through water toward several floating bubbles which represent different goals. In teh case of wight loss, these goals may be a certain number on the scale, a particular size of jeans or a fitness goal such as distance on a treadmill. Whatever your goals are, make them crisp, vivid and realistic.

When using commands, stick with the rules regarding affirmations. Instruct your subconscious using positive statements and the present tense.

Remember that healthy weight loss doesn?t happen overnight. Instead of dangerous crash diets or pills, self-hypnosis provides a gentle, natural and, in the long run, much more effective option. When you change the way you think, your body has no choice but to follow!

Source: http://www.hypnosisblacksecrets.com/hypnosis/self-hypnosis-for-healthy-weight-loss

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New clues about how amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) develops

Mar. 31, 2013 ? Johns Hopkins scientists say they have evidence from animal studies that a type of central nervous system cell other than motor neurons plays a fundamental role in the development of amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), a fatal degenerative disease. The discovery holds promise, they say, for identifying new targets for interrupting the disease's progress.

In a study described online in Nature Neuroscience, the researchers found that, in mice bred with a gene mutation that causes human ALS, dramatic changes occurred in oligodendrocytes -- cells that create insulation for the nerves of the central nervous system -- long before the first physical symptoms of the disease appeared. Oligodendrocytes located near motor neurons -- cells that govern movement -- died off at very high rates, and new ones regenerated in their place were inferior and unhealthy.

The researchers also found, to their surprise, that suppressing an ALS-causing gene in oligodendrocytes of mice bred with the disease -- while still allowing the gene to remain in the motor neurons -- profoundly delayed the onset of ALS. It also prolonged survival of these mice by more than three months, a long time in the life span of a mouse. These observations suggest that oligodendrocytes play a very significant role in the early stage of the disease.

"The abnormalities in oligodendrocytes appear to be having a negative impact on the survival of motor neurons," says Dwight E. Bergles, Ph.D., a co-author and a professor of neuroscience at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine. "The motor neurons seem to be dependent on healthy oligodendrocytes for survival, something we didn't appreciate before."

"These findings teach us that cells we never thought had a role in ALS not only are involved but also clearly contribute to the onset of the disease," says co-author Jeffrey D. Rothstein, M.D., Ph.D., a professor of neurology at Johns Hopkins and director of the Johns Hopkins Medicine Brain Science Institute.

Scientists have long believed that oligodendrocytes functioned only as structural elements of the central nervous system. They wrap around nerves, making up the myelin sheath that provides the "insulation" that allows nerve signals to be transmitted rapidly and efficiently. However, Rothstein and others recently discovered that oligodendrocytes also deliver essential nutrients to neurons, and that most neurons need this support to survive.

The Johns Hopkins team of Bergles and Rothstein published a paper in 2010 that described in mice with ALS an unexpected massive proliferation of oligodendrocyte progenitor cells in the spinal cord's motor neurons, and that these progenitors were being mobilized to make new oligodendrocytes. The researchers believed that these cells were multiplying because of an injury to oligodendrocytes, but they weren't sure what was happening. Using a genetic method of tracking the fate of oligodendrocytes, in the new study, the researchers found that cells present in young mice with ALS were dying off at an increasing rate in concert with advancing disease. Moreover, the development of the newly formed oligodendrocytes was stalled and they were not able to provide motor neurons with a needed source of cell nutrients.

To determine whether the changes to the oligodendrocytes were just a side effect of the death of motor neurons, the scientists used a poison to kill motor neurons in the ALS mice and found no response from the progenitors, suggesting, says Rothstein, that it is the mutant ALS gene that is damaging oligodendrocytes directly.

Meanwhile, in separate experiments, the researchers found similar changes in samples of tissues from the brains of 35 people who died of ALS. Rothstein says it may be possible to see those changes early on in the disease and use MRI technology to follow progression.

"If our research is confirmed, perhaps we can start looking at ALS patients in a different way, looking for damage to oligodendrocytes as a marker for disease progression," Rothstein says. "This could not only lead to new treatment targets but also help us to monitor whether the treatments we offer are actually working."

ALS, also known as Lou Gehrig's disease, named for the Yankee baseball great who died from it, affects nerve cells in the brain and spinal cord that control voluntary muscle movement. The nerve cells waste away or die, and can no longer send messages to muscles, eventually leading to muscle weakening, twitching and an inability to move the arms, legs and body. Onset is typically around age 50 and death often occurs within three to five years of diagnosis. Some 10 percent of cases are hereditary.

There is no cure for ALS and there is only one FDA-approved drug treatment, which has just a small effect in slowing disease progression and increasing survival.

Even though myelin loss has not previously been thought to occur in the gray matter, a region in the brain where neurons process information, the researchers in the new study found in ALS patients a significant loss of myelin in one of every three samples of human tissue taken from the brain's gray matter, suggesting that the oligodendrocytes were abnormal. It isn't clear if the oligodendrocytes that form this myelin in the gray matter play a different role than in white matter -- the region in the brain where signals are relayed.

The findings further suggest that clues to the treatment of other diseases long believed to be focused in the brain's gray matter -- such as Alzheimer's disease, Huntington's disease and Parkinson's disease -- may be informed by studies of diseases of the white matter, such as multiple sclerosis (MS). Bergles says ALS and MS researchers never really thought their diseases had much in common before.

Oligodendrocytes have been under intense scrutiny in MS, Bergles says. In MS, the disease over time can transform from a remitting-relapsing form -- in which myelin is attacked but then is regenerated when existing progenitors create new oligodendrocytes to re-form myelin -- to a more chronic stage in which oligodendrocytes are no longer regenerated. MS researchers are working to identify new ways to induce the creation of new oligodendrocytes and improve their survival. "It's possible that we may be able to dovetail with some of the same therapeutics to slow the progression of ALS," Bergles says.

Other Johns Hopkins researchers involved in the study include Shin H. Kang, Ph.D.; Ying Li, Ph.D.; Ileana Lorenzini, M.S.; and Lyle Ostrow, M.D., Ph.D.

This research was supported by grants from the National Institutes of Health's National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke (NS 051509), the ALS Association, P2ALS, the Robert Packard Center for ALS Research at Johns Hopkins and the Brain Science Institute.

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