Potential investigation of alleged mother of Justin Bieber's baby - TheCelebrityCafe.com

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AppId is over the quota

An investigation of Justin Bieber's alleged baby mama may ensue because her claims suggest she had sex with a minor.

According to Mariah Yeater, she and Justin Bieber engaged in sexual relations after one of his concerts at the Staples Center in Los Angeles and as a result, he is the father of her child. At the time of this alleged incident, Yeater had just turned 19 and Bieber was only 16. According to California law, it is illegal for anyone over the age of 18 to have sex with a person under the age of 18, even if it is consensual.

No official crime has been reported, but if a case does exist, the Los Angeles Police Department will take a glance at it.

"If it's brought to our attention, of course we'll look into it," LAPD Commander Andrew Smith assured in an interview with the Associated Press.

Yeater is demanding child support and a paternity test from Bieber. A hearing regarding the matter is set for Dec. 15.

Amid the allegations, Bieber's representatives deny that he is the father of Yeater's child.

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A Metropolitan Opera High Note, as Donations Hit $182 Million - New York Times

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AppId is over the quota

In the warren of Met administrative offices, the people who run one of the world’s busiest opera houses had something else to applaud: a record amount of contributions for the fiscal year that ended in July. According to preliminary figures released for the first time, the Met hauled in $182 million, an astonishing amount in a tough economic climate and 50 percent more than it raised just the year before.

And there was other good news. For the first time in seven years, the Met had balanced its budget, thanks partly to $11 million in profits last year from its HD movie theater transmissions, which had been operating for only five years.

The results have the air of vindication for the free-spending — and risky — strategy of Peter Gelb, the Met’s general manager. He took over six seasons ago with a mandate to revitalize the company, stem a box office decline and make the Met more relevant in an era of aging opera audiences. He decided that the Met had to spend money to make money.

And so it has, with budgets soaring by nearly 50 percent in the past five years, even as the economy soured and City Opera left Lincoln Center, nearly broke.

Could this one-year bonanza be a sign that Mr. Gelb’s big gamble is going to pay off?

“I believe it is an endorsement in general of the artistic results that we are achieving here,” he said in an interview. “We are certainly receiving larger gifts in greater quantities than ever before in the history of the Met.”

But even Mr. Gelb’s enthusiasm cannot erase the significant financial problems that remain. The Met is carrying $41 million in debt. Ticket sales declined last year. The endowment remains damaged by the recession. At last count, its pension accounts were seriously underfinanced. And no one, not even Mr. Gelb, suggests that it will be easy to repeat the fund-raising success of the past year.

Donor contributions now support 43 percent of the Met’s whopping $325 million operating budget, up from 38 percent in 2005.

Without that kind of continuing generosity, the Met will have an exceedingly hard time paying for the most expensive performing arts program in the country.

“Any performing arts organization that depends on contributions is going to have to raise even more in contributions the following year,” said Robert J. Flanagan, a retired Stanford University economics professor who studies the performing arts. “Are the tastes of people who like opera strong enough to be willing to pay that amount?”

Of course, to focus too much on these pitfalls now, as the money pours in, is a little like worrying about your cholesterol as rescuers save your life after a car crash.

Mr. Gelb’s mission was to raise money by enhancing the Met’s profile and potential for excitement with new productions and investment in media enterprises. That he has done.

David G. Knott, a McKinsey consultant who is in his third year on the Met board, said he and his wife, Françoise Girard, had added, along with their regular $100,000 contribution, a $500,000 gift last year to support “The Enchanted Island,” a new Baroque pastiche production this season. They also bequeathed a “good chunk” of their estate.

“We wanted to be part of, ‘Let’s renew the art form, let’s connect opera to new generations of audience, and let’s make this part of everyday lives,’ ” Mr. Knott said. He said he agreed with Mr. Gelb’s financial strategy and was motivated by his effort to “democratize opera” through the HD transmissions.

“If we can’t bring people to the opera, let’s bring opera to the people,” he said.

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Copts Denounce Egyptian Government Over Killings - New York Times

 

The bloodshed appeared to mark a turning point in the revolution, many here said. It comes just eight months after Egyptians celebrated their military as a savior for its refusal to use force against civilians demanding the ouster of President Hosni Mubarak. Confidence in the military had already been eroded by its repeated deferrals of a handover of power to civilian rule, now set to take place perhaps as much as two years after parliamentary elections, set to begin next month.

Now political liberals as well as Copts said the brutal crackdown had finally extinguished the public’s faith in the ruling military council as the guardian of a peaceful transition to democracy.

“The credit that the military received from the people in Tahrir Square just ran out yesterday,” the party leader Ayman Nour said at a news conference of prominent parties and political leaders denouncing the military. “There is no partnership between us and the council now that the blood of our brothers stands between us.”

Others took an even darker view, saying that the violence suggested that the military may now hold an even tighter grip on power than Mr. Mubarak did.

“Cairo yesterday was a part of Syria,” said Shady el-Ghazaly Harb, a liberal activist who helped set off the revolution, invoking the violent crackdown against that country’s uprising. “This is a threat not just to the Copts, but to all of the people. We saw what would happen if we rose up against the army.”

Witnesses, victims and doctors said Monday that demonstrators were killed when military-led security forces drove armored vehicles over as many as six people and fired live ammunition into the crowds. Doctors at a Coptic hospital showed journalists 17 bodies, including one with a crushed skull and others with mangled limbs.

Doctors and Interior Ministry officials said bullet wounds accounted for most of the deaths, including that of Mina Daniel, a young political activist a doctor said had been shot in the shoulder and leg. More than 300 others were wounded in four hours of street fights, the Health Ministry said.

The military council did not explain Monday why shots were fired or why military vehicles ran over demonstrators.

In a statement on state television, it appeared to distance its officers from any responsibility for the deadly clashes. The statement referred only to unspecified “unfortunate events” that “transformed peaceful protests to bloody ones.” Expressing “deepest condolences to the families of the victims,” the military reiterated its determination to refuse “attempts to cause a rift between the armed forces and the Egyptian people.”

The military also sought to appease the Coptic Christians, about 10 percent of the population here. Although the Copts had embraced the revolution’s promise of a tolerant and pluralistic democracy, many have been uneasy as the removal of Mr. Mubarak’s iron fist has unleashed suppressed rivalries, as in the recent dispute over the construction of a church near the southern city of Aswan that inspired the march in Cairo on Sunday.

The military said it had asked its civilian prime minister to begin an investigation into the violence, and Egyptian news organizations reported that at least 15 suspects were being prosecuted in military courts for instigating the riots.

The civilian cabinet, meanwhile, announced a series of long-promised measures to deter discrimination. The measures would impose jail time and large fines on anyone found guilty of discrimination on the basis of religion, with heavier penalties for government employees. And to address the legacy of cumbersome rules on permits to build churches, the cabinet said it would implement a law to standardize procedures for all houses of worship.

Heba Afify contributed reporting from Cairo.

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Vince Gilligan walks us through Breaking Bad's 4th season (Part 2 of 4) - A.V. Club New York

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Breaking Bad creator Vince Gilligan recently spoke with The A.V. Club about the show’s fourth season, episode by episode. This section of the interview covers episodes four through seven, beginning with “Bullet Points” and concluding with “Problem Dog.” Part one can be found here.

 

Vince Gilligan: Walt and Skyler enter that episode needing to accomplish a very specific, concrete goal, and that goal is to sell Skyler’s story—that they have come into this large amount of money through Walt’s illicit gambling. That addiction has practically torn the marriage apart, and it’s made life miserable, and it explains all of Walt’s strange behavior over the last many months. That looks to be the big drama of the episode.  The writer of the episode, Moira Walley-Beckett, does a great job setting up what it is you’re going to see in the earlier scene where Skyler’s saying, “Okay, here’s your script. First you’re going to say this, then I’m going to say that, and you should cry a little. We should talk through every beat of this. Let’s leave no stone unturned, let’s make sure we sell it perfectly.” 

In classic dramatic fashion, the story gets told, and it gets told well, and the night is a success in that regard, but the old expression, “Men plan and God laughs,” comes into force here. Suddenly, what we thought was the drama of the episode—will Hank buy Walt and Skyler’s story or will he not?—suddenly gets deferred, and we realize there’s a much bigger issue at stake, which is whether Hank will figure out that Jesse Pinkman shot Gale Boetticher. We’ve got much bigger fish to fry dramatically. We like those kind of moments, because it feels like real life. We’ve all had those moments where, you know, you go into a doctor with a hangnail, and you suddenly realize you’ve got cancer. It’s out of the frying pan and into the fire.

AVC: One of the things people said about this episode is that it’d be really easy to poke holes in Walt and Skyler’s story if you really wanted to try, and it seems like you guys acknowledge that by showing that Walt can’t count cards to save his life. Do you think the characters are aware that their story is essentially unbelievable?

VG: Well, give me some examples! [Laughs.] I thought it was a pretty good story myself.

AVC: Well not unbelievable, obviously, because Hank and Marie do believe it. But do you think that Skyler and Walt are aware that the story could fall apart very easily?

VG: Yeah. They’re concerned about being caught, about the suspicion being shined on them and their story beginning to unravel. I think that’s inherent in the scene itself that Skyler’s so dead-set on dotting all her Is and crossing all her Ts that she goes to these great lengths of writing a script for them to memorize. I think that’s inherent in that great attention to detail—the fear that they’ll get caught.

AVC: You brought back the car wash this season in a big way. What do you think that adds to the show, beyond giving the characters a way to launder money?

VG: I think it’s another example of the question you asked a little while ago. Essentially what I was saying was that we try to bring the past back into the present, and I like the idea of this car wash which we only really saw, prior to this, in the pilot. We saw this second job that Walt had that he didn’t really enjoy so much, that basically showed what a drudgery his life was. Bringing that back and using that in a sort of ironic sense to help him further his criminal goals seemed like a fun thing to do.

AVC: This episode has Gus and Mike deciding what to do about Jesse. How much did you know about where that story was going?

VG: We tried to work several episodes ahead. The first question we started off with was, “Do you know at the beginning of a season where it’s going to end?” We don’t typically, and we didn’t this year. But we do try to work at least three to four episodes ahead. In the writers’ room, we don’t say, “A fun thing for the next episode would be for Mike to take Jesse out into the desert, and we’ll figure out when we break the next story what we’re doing for that.” I’d be too scared of painting ourselves into a corner to work that way. We don’t embark upon a moment like that before we have the broad strokes figured out. What is the plan? Why is Mike taking Jesse out into the desert? Why would Gus want that? What’s his ultimate goal? We try to think three or four or five episodes ahead and have as much of the future plotting figured out in broad strokes as possible before we start nailing down the immediate scenes we’re doing. 

“Shotgun” (Aug. 14, 2011)
Jesse’s trip into the desert with Mike turns out to be designed by Gus to drive a wedge between Walter and Jesse and bring Jesse further into the organization.

AVC: How much of Gus’ plan is him trying to drive a wedge, and how much of that is legitimately recognizing something in Jesse?

VG: I guess that’s up to the viewer to decide. As I was saying earlier, I don’t want to nail down anything more than I have to. I want folks to have these water-cooler moments the next day where they can have really energetic discussions about questions such as that. My own personal opinion is that a lot of this dates back to “Box Cutter.” There’s a moment at the end of that episode where Gus cuts Victor’s throat and lets Victor drop dead onto the floor. Walt looks like he’s about to vomit, and he looks completely terrified, as most of us would. Then Gus happens to glance at Jesse, and there’s this long shot of Jesse. We hold on Jesse quite a long time as he slowly leans forward. There’s this moment of, if not connection between the two, there’s this moment of, for my money, Gus seeing a strength, a resilience, and an anger in Jesse, a substance in Jesse that he didn’t see before. 

And marrying that realization with the realization that Jesse had the wherewithal to go kill Gale, suddenly Gus Fring realizes that this guy who he’s never given a second thought to may have more substance than he previously would have guessed. So I think primarily, yes, what Gus is doing by having Mike take Jesse out on money pickups is he’s starting to drive a wedge between Jesse and Walt, but I think maybe he does see some worth, some utility in Jesse. And he had probably first noted that in the first episode of this season.

AVC: In this episode, Walter gets drunk and says something that causes Hank to reopen the investigation of Gale’s murder and discover Gus’ connection. How prideful do you think Walter is? How important is it to him to be recognized?

VG: I think Walter is the most prideful character you will ever come upon. I think he is driven by so many demons that he himself won’t cop to what we were speaking of earlier: that he’s the world’s greatest liar and the biggest victim of his lies is himself. He lies to himself more than he does anybody else, and that’s saying a lot. I think he does not recognize within him this unquenchable pride and endless need for approval. When he hears his brother-in-law go on about what a genius Gale Boetticher was, and he’s hearing this man mistakenly give credit to someone else for Walt’s own work, it just drives him up a tree. He can’t stand it, and he does something very short-sighted and self-destructive. He comes just short of saying, “It was me! It was not this idiot Gale!” He gets as close as he possibly can without giving himself away completely. And in that very prideful and self-destructive fashion he gets the ball rolling again on Hank’s investigation. That is part and parcel of who Walt has always been. We’ve had many episodes where his pride goeth before the fall. It’s always fun to come up with those moments, because they are absolutely true to Walt’s fundamental character. We love the irony of the bad guy causing himself a whole lot of grief that he didn’t need to suffer, but for the pride that he possesses.

AVC: This episode launches the major story arc for Hank, when he figures out that Gus is a criminal, even if no one else will believe him. When did you figure out that story point, and how naturally did it all flow from there? 

VG: We had that idea within the first few weeks. I’m not a chess player in real life; I’m a terrible chess player. But I do love the analogy of playing chess as it relates to what Walt and Gus are doing and as it relates to what we writers try to do. We’re trying to play a very deep game; we’re thinking five or 10 or 15 moves ahead. We don’t always succeed, but that’s the intent. And to that end, that idea of Hank becoming wise to Gus Fring and to the fact that he’s a drug kingpin, it felt like a natural development. Hank is one of the integral characters on the show. He represents law and order, and if he remains completely unaware of Gus Fring and his culpability and his criminality, then we’d be missing a beat. We’d be missing out on a lot of fun. So I think that idea probably dates back to a season before, but the actual structure of how he comes to this realization was something we started putting into the works probably two or three weeks into planning out season four.

AVC: You talked a lot before season three about how Skyler couldn’t remain ignorant of Walt’s actions because she’s very smart. Hank is also very smart. How much do you worry about making him seem too stupid?

VG: We worry a lot about that. We try to do as much as we can without falling over that edge. I think Walt—at least for the present, or for the recent past—has been sheltered, not by Hank being dumb or dense, but by the fact that love blinds us to a great many things. I think Hank has a real love for his brother-in-law. He sees the best in him. And he sees him in a very specific way, as an egghead, and as someone who is very much the opposite of what Hank is. I think his respect for the man and his years of seeing him in a milquetoast fashion has, if not blinded him to who Walt really is these days, then colored his perceptions of the man to the point that Walt will not easily fall under Hank’s suspicion.

We also try and make Walt as smart as he can be, with a few dopey moments, like when he brags to his brother-in-law that Gale Boetticher is not that smart. A few moments like that aside, Walt is pretty smart around his brother-in-law and keeps himself safe. We’re always trying to keep everybody as smart as possible. What we don’t want to ever have happen is the story moving forward just because of a big dopey lapse on one character’s part. If we’re going to have a character make a mistake, like Walt being prideful to Hank and thus making a tactical error, we want those moments to stem from fundamental character flaws that we’ve already established.

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Paul McCartney's Wedding Ring: All the Details! - People Magazine

 

When Paul McCartney and Nancy Shevell exchanged vows in London on Sunday, Oct. 9, they were clad head to toe in creations by McCartney’s fashion designer daughter, Stella. But one wedding must-have Stella couldn’t provide? The eternity diamond band McCartney slipped on Shevell’s finger during the Town Hall ceremony.

In a vintage style and featuring 5 carats of square-cut diamonds set in platinum, the Neil Lane wedding band was meant to “complement her engagement ring, but not overshadow it,” the celebrity jeweler tells PEOPLE. “Nancy wanted a band with a vintage feel.” Indeed, the band and engagement ring — a 5-plus-carat, flawless diamond art-deco ring also by Lane — “work as a set,” he says. “Paul loved it!”

McCartney’s thumbs up was important to Lane, who says, “Paul is an artist. When we worked on the engagement ring, he took it seriously and was into the stones, shapes and styles — like a kid in a candy store. I could see him imagining what it would look like on Nancy’s finger.” And now McCartney has his answer — sparkling right there on Shevell’s left hand.

–Elizabeth Leonard

YOU ASKED, WE FOUND: STAR LOOKS

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Libya's revolutionary fighters continue progress - USA Today

AppId is over the quota AppId is over the quota SIRTE, Libya – Revolutionary fighters got closer Monday to the last significant stand of soldiers loyal to former dictator Moammar Gadhafi and found a desperate scene at a hospital where patients and doctors got caught in between the two sides.

By Majid Saeedi, Getty Images

National Transitional Council fighters take part in a street battle against Moammar Gadhafi's troops Saturday in Sirte, Libya.

By Majid Saeedi, Getty Images

National Transitional Council fighters take part in a street battle against Moammar Gadhafi's troops Saturday in Sirte, Libya.

Tank, rocket and machine-gun fire blasted through the streets around the Ouagadougou Convention Center, an ornate complex that Gadhafi used for international meetings. Revolutionary forces took the complex from loyalist soldiers Monday.

Revolutionary forces also said they made gains in the inland enclave of Bani Walid, where Libya's transitional government says high-level figures from the Gadhafi regime are hiding.

Fighters in Sirte pushed through residential areas to get to forces commanded by one of Gadhafi's sons. On Sunday they reached the Ibn Sina Hospital and reporters arrived there Monday.

"It's bad, very bad," said Mahmoud Zoubi, a doctor from Misrata who wandered through corridors littered with shards of glass from shattered windows.

Trash rotted outside and blood stained the floors. In the lobby, dazed men lay on beds. Many appeared malnourished.

One woman, Salma Abdul Aziz, 23, had given birth on Sunday and cried as she talked of her husband and three children who were still trapped somewhere in the city under siege now for three weeks.

Aid workers were preparing to evacuate dozens of patients and brought in food, drugs and fuel for the hospital power generators.

"The hospitals are overstretched everywhere," said Dibeh Fikr, of the International Committee of the Red Cross in Libya.

Revolutionary fighters said that they believed many of the wounded men in the hospital were loyalist fighters.

"But we don't care," said Salah al Jbou, a rebel commander overseeing the evacuation of the hospital. He said that the justice could come once the wounded had been treated.

In the hospital were foreign workers from eastern Europe, the Philippines and other Arab nations who said that they had been trapped there when fighting began.

"They prevent us. We tried and failed," said Ayman Katari, a Palestinian doctor who had tried to get out of Sirte.

He said that there had been no water or electricity in the city for three weeks and that they had run out of medicine and food.

With phone and Internet service interrupted, the workers had not been able to contact their families for weeks.

A Bulgarian nurse cried after reaching her son on a borrowed satellite phone.

The Philippine staff compiled a list of their names to give to the news media to let their families know they were safe.

"Since two months we cannot contact our families," said Leiden Ramos of the Philippines. "They don't know what has happened to us."

Contributing: The Associated Press

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Cape Verde's Former President Wins Leadership Prize for a Graceful Exit - Wall Street Journal

 

The foundation of businessman Mo Ibrahim awarded its lucrative Africa leadership prize for the first time in three years, honoring Cape Verde's former President Pedro Pires for his stewardship of the tiny island nation and his peaceful exit from power.

The Ibrahim Prize for Achievement in African Leadership awards more than $5 million, given in annual installments, to leaders in Africa who are elected democratically, lead admirably and leave office constitutionally.

The last award was given to Botswana's former President Festus Mogae in 2008. Since then, the foundation has chosen not to name a recipient—a clear sign of disapproval with the many African leaders who have clung to power even after losing elections.

The prize committee praised Mr. Pires on Monday for his role in shepherding Cape Verde from colonialism and one-party rule to a stable democracy.

During a decade as president, Mr. Pires presided over annual economic growth of 6%.

Mr. Pires became Cape Verde's first prime minister after the rocky archipelago off West Africa, a colonial slave-trading outpost, won independence from Portugal in 1975. He stepped down in 1991 after losing the first multiparty elections held in any of Africa's five Portuguese-speaking nations.

Constitutional reforms later shifted power from the premiership to the presidency. Mr. Pires ran successfully for president in 2001 and stepped down early this year after the two-term limit dictated by the constitution.

Ireland's former President Mary Robinson, who serves on the seven-member committee, praised 77-year-old Mr. Pires for his "willingness to lose an election ... come back and become president, and bring about an economic management transformation."

In Africa, stepping away from power has been a rare career choice. In Ivory Coast late last year, Laurent Gbagbo refused to relinquish power after losing a presidential election to Alassane Ouattara, prompting a civil conflict that dragged into April, when Mr. Gbagbo was ousted by force. In Zimbabwe, an ailing President Robert Mugabe is pushing to hold elections scheduled for 2013 next year instead, to end the power-sharing arrangement with Prime Minister Morgan Tsvangirai in place since violent and disputed elections in 2008. Ms. Robinson Ireland's former President Mary Robinson, who serves on the seven-member prize committee, warned that while many African countries are posting enviable growth rates, their democratic and civil institutions often lag far behind, with some slipping back toward autocracy.

Last month, however, Michael Sata's victory over incumbent president Rupiah Banda in Zambia led to a peaceful presidential transition of power.

International observers are hoping the trend continues through several tests ahead. Liberia holds elections Tuesday, and Gambia and the Democratic Republic of the Congo will hold them in November.

"It's balanced development that we really seek. But it's important that we think about strengthening the institutions," that underpin civil society, Ms. Robinson said.

Because of those concerns, the committee didn't award the Ibrahim prize in 2009 and 2010, after giving it to Mr. Mogae in 2008 and former President Joaquim Chissano of Mozambique in 2007. Nelson Mandela also was an honorary recipient that year.

Not extending the award has been seen as a stinging comment on the state of African politics. But the foundation also has attracted criticism for such decisions from those who say it reinforces stereotypes of the continent as ungovernable.

Mr. Ibrahim said Monday that rewarding a leader who didn't live up to basic democratic standards would be counterproductive.

"It's not a pension," said Mr. Ibrahim, who funds the prize with the fortune he made from Celtel, a mobile-phone company he founded in 1998. "We have to have a worthy winner."

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