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BANGKOK (AP) — Some 85,000 HIV-infected people in Myanmar are not getting treatment due to a lack of funding, despite renewed international engagement with the government amid a wave of political reform, a medical aid group said Wednesday.
Doctors Without Borders warned in its report that the situation in Myanmar could worsen after the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria cut funding worldwide because of a shortfall in donations.
The money was expected to provide HIV drugs for 46,500 people in Myanmar and help treat another 10,000 sickened by drug-resistant tuberculosis, the report said.
Cases of tuberculosis — a major killer of HIV patients — in Myanmar are nearly triple the global rate, as difficult-to-treat forms of the disease that do not respond to common treatment surge.
In 2009, the U.N. estimated 240,000 people were infected with HIV and about 18,000 were dying from it annually in Myanmar, which has one of the world’s worst health systems.
Doctors Without Borders provides antiretroviral drugs to about 23,000 people at 23 clinics nationwide, funding more than half of all HIV treatment being provided to nearly 40,000 patients, said Peter Paul de Groote, who heads the organization’s Myanmar operation.
Myanmar receives a fraction of the international aid provided elsewhere, largely because many nations did not support the former reclusive military government that ruled for nearly half a century. But last year, a nominally civilian government took office and launched unexpected reforms that have been applauded by the international community.
“Regardless of what is happening in the country, the people that are in need of treatment, need treatment,” de Groote said by phone. “Of course, we all hope that the developments as they seem to be going in that direction will lead to more money into the country, but, in general, I think this money should be coming in regardless of what the situation is.”
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ATLANTA (AP) — A federal advisory panel wants all U.S. adults to get vaccinated against whooping cough.
The panel voted Wednesday to expand its recommendation to include all those 65 and older who haven’t gotten a whooping cough shot as an adult.
Children have been vaccinated against whooping cough since the 1940s, but a vaccine for adolescents and adults was not licensed until 2005.
Since then, the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices has gradually added groups of adults to its recommendations, including 2010 advice that it be given to elderly people who spend a lot of time around infants.
Wednesday’s recommendation means now all adults should get at least one dose.
“They’ve been moving up to this in baby steps,” said Dr. William Schaffner, a Vanderbilt University vaccines expert.
Whooping cough, or pertussis, is a highly contagious bacterial disease that in rare cases can be fatal. It leads to severe coughing that causes children to make a distinctive whooping sound as they gasp for breath.
Recommendations from the panel are usually adopted by the government, which sends the guidance out to doctors.
Contributing to the push to vaccinate more adults was a California whooping cough epidemic in 2010 that infected 9,000. Ten babies died after exposure to infected adults or older children.
There’s little data on how many elderly people have gotten the vaccine. Only about 8 percent of adults under 65 have been vaccinated, but about 70 percent of adolescents have.
Health officials believe whooping cough is underreported in older adults, perhaps because in older people the illness can be hard to distinguish from other coughing ailments.
A goal of the recommendation is to prevent teens and adults from spreading the disease to infants, although there’s not good evidence this “herd immunity” approach has worked so far. Vaccination for children is included in a series of shots, beginning at 2 months.
The adult vaccine combines protection against tetanus, diphtheria and whooping cough. One version of the vaccine, made by GlaxoSmithKline, was licensed for use in the elderly last year. The committee said another version, made by Sanofi Pasteur, can also be given. Both cost about $35 a dose.
The shot is as safe as a regular tetanus booster. Estimates range widely for how effective the vaccine is at preventing whooping cough in older adults, or how much its protection wanes years afterward.
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Online:
CDC: http://www.cdc.gov/vaccines/recs/ACIP/
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LOS ANGELES |
LOS ANGELES (Reuters) – At 10 years old, Uggie has a long show business resume. But it wasn’t until the lively Jack Russell terrier landed the role of sidekick to actor Jean Dujardin in silent film “The Artist” that he hit the big time.
The scene-stealing star of Hollywood’s awards season talked with Reuters (via one of his trainers, Sarah Clifford) about the art of animal acting, being snubbed by the Oscars and why “The Artist” is probably his last big movie.
Q: How are you handling the spotlight right now?
A: “It is so amazing … I have never experienced it before. I have been doing this for 10 years and we have never had a dog get this popular off of one project.”
Q: How did this role come about?
A: “When we got the script for the artist, saying it called for a really talented Jack Russell, I thought Uggie is the dog for this movie. There is no other dog who can do this. This dog has to perform really big circusy tricks and perform with this guy on stage and this dog is a star. Uggie has those qualities more than any other dog that I knew of. Jack Russells are real high energy dogs and he had just finished ‘Water for Elephants’ so he was right up to date on his training.”
Q: But surely he had to audition?
A: “He definitely had to audition. At first we sent them (the producers) some videos and didn’t hear back for a month and I thought they had found someone else. And then the directors were flying to L.A. and wanted to meet Uggie for an audition. They came with a little camcorder. We showed them Uggie’s tricks — playing dead, skateboarding, all his high energy tricks. And you could tell they were very impressed … And then we didn’t hear back for like three to four weeks. And then we got the callback saying they would like to hire Uggie. It was a long process but we were thrilled.”
Q: What kind of new skills did he have to learn?
A: “He had to learn really being able to walk with an actor off leash, and stay by their side. We practiced that a lot. We also worked on the sequence where he walks and falls back on his hind legs. Although Uggie had already been able to play dead, we just made it more dramatic.”
Q: Some actors have instant chemistry. Was that the case with Uggie and Jean Dujardin?
A: “Before filming we spent three days with Jean. That is the most important — having the actor be able to work with the dog. Jean was so awesome and by three or four days I knew it was going to look so good.”
Q: Do you regard Uggie as an actor in this movie?
A: “There are moments in this film that I have never experienced doing this job. There was a take in the scene where Jean holds a gun up to his head when Uggie actually reached out and tried to pull the gun out of his hand with his mouth. Uggie put his mouth on Jean’s hand and started pulling his hand. We were so stunned. He wasn’t told to do that by us. I cried like an idiot … I feel that because Jean was trembling, Uggie felt he was in danger and was truly trying to stop him hurting himself. That dog was acting in the moment. He was responding to the actor in an emotional sense. I think that’s a form of acting that was amazing to see. I don’t know why they didn’t use that take. I hope it makes the outtakes.”
Q: How much does Uggie enjoy the red carpet part of being famous?
A: “He definitely enjoys it. It’s all people petting him and kissing him and taking their photos with him. Dogs totally feed off positive energy like that and being praised. He is definitely not a dog who is nervous at all. A lot of dogs can’t handle the red carpet like he does — there is a lot of noise with people screaming his name. But he is not even fazed by it.”
Q: How do you feel about Uggie not getting an Oscar nomination?
A: “I understand the Academy established that (no animal) rule a long time ago. I personally am not offended by that. I love that Uggie is getting recognized for being an actor. I think it is beautiful and wonderful. But I also think that the Academy Awards is such a prestigious show that it should be just for the humans. But it would be really exceptional and great if the animals were given some kind of acknowledgment. Some kind of little shout out would be more than enough.”
Q: So what’s coming up next for Uggie? Does he now have his pick of roles?
A: “He has been doing press, like, every day. He is so busy and we don’t want to overwork him. He is 10 years old and close to retirement. He can do little jobs here and there but he probably won’t do another feature film, but as far as little commercials and stuff goes, yes. As long as he is still having fun, but we are never going to make the dog do it.”
(Reporting By Jill Serjeant; editing by Patricia Reaney)
LOS ANGELES |
LOS ANGELES (Reuters) – Oscar week kicked off Tuesday night at a celebration of this year’s nominees for live action and short films, who are among the least-known of the 2012 Academy Award contenders but no less important to the movie industry.
Brad Bird, two-time Oscar winner for “The Incredibles” and “Ratatouille,” hosted the event in front of a packed house at the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. The movies were screened and their makers discussed the art form that can launch a filmmaker’s career and provide a break for veterans from the commercial grind of making studio-backed feature films.
“Short film is an art form in itself and there are certain topics that I believe can only find their audience if they’re done well in short film. A feature film is something totally different, said Stefan Gieren, producer of nominated live action short, “Raju.”
Ten films were screened in all, each of the five nominees from the best animated short category followed by the nominees in the best live action group.
Among the animated shorts, “The Fantastic Flying Books of Mr. Morris Lessmore,” a paean to the healing power of books, was partially inspired by Hurricane Katrina after it devastated the hometown of New Orleans filmmaker William Joyce.
“In the aftermath of Katrina, the whole city of New Orleans was sort of gray,” Joyce told a packed house at the Academy’s Samuel Goldwyn Theater. “It had lost its color and we found drifts of books washed around in the detritus of the storm.”
Other animated short film nominees include “Dimanche/Sunday” by Patrick Doyon of Canada, “La Luna” by Pixar Animation’s Enrico Casarosa, “A Morning Stroll” by the UK’s Grant Orchard, and “Wild Life” by Canada’s Amanda Forbis and Wendy Tilby.
The live action nominees include “Pentecost” by Ireland’s Peter McDonald, “Raju” by German Max Zahle, “Time Freak” from New Yorker Andrew Bowler, “Tuba Atlantic” a film school thesis by Norwegian Hallvar Witzo, and “The Shore” by “Hotel Rwanda” director Terry George.
“It was a chance to talk about reconciliation in Northern Ireland in a way that was specific,” said George’s daughter, Oorlagh who produced the movie about boyhood friends in Belfast reuniting after 25 years. “We shot in our backyard. This is a home movie, my aunt did the costumes, my mom cooked the food.”
While short films were once typically shown in movie theaters ahead of the features advertised on movie marquees, currently they mostly play at film festivals.
But as part of an Oscar-themed package, all 10 nominees were released yesterday on iTunes in 56 countries, and they are currently playing in 138 theaters and video on demand, making this selection of Oscar shorts the most watched in history.
“We have grossed through yesterday over a million dollars,” proclaimed the Academy’s Tom Boone who projected a total tally of $1.7 million, an unprecedented figure spurred by both a digital and Internet resurgence of the short form.
“They can make digital copies in a much easier fashion and get distributed in theatrical venues,” Bird told Reuters. “And there’s nothing better than being in the dark with a bunch of strangers looking at a giant big screen!”
(Editing by Bob Tourtellotte)
LOS ANGELES |
LOS ANGELES (Reuters) – If Rooney Mara wins an Oscar for her role as a troubled waif in “The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo,” it’s unlikely she’ll thank Paul Holehouse from the stage.
Maybe she should. The film, produced by Sony Pictures, might never have been made without Holehouse giving his approval.
Holehouse, the senior risk consultant for Fireman’s Fund Insurance, huddled with the “Dragon Tattoo” producers to change scenes in which Mara rode a motorcycle, a key element of the movie. Stunt doubles were added and scenes rewritten on the suggestion of Holehouse.
Like a house or car, films need to be insured against a star’s injury, the destruction of the set and all manner of disasters that can befall a production. Fireman’s Fund, which says it insures 85 percent of Hollywood’s filmmaking, wrote policies for four of this year’s Best Film nominees – “Moneyball,” The Artist,” “Hugo” and “Extremely Loud Incredibly Close.”
“Insurance policies are the only guarantee that a film can get completed for those involved in financing a movie, including foreign purchases, the banks, the studio and all others,” said Ryan Kavanaugh, chief executive officer of Relativity Media, which has insured many of its films with Fireman’s Fund. “Fireman’s is one of the few parities who provide this kind of necessary insurance.”
Not every film needs a dramatic fix. Fireman’s Fund didn’t insist on changes to last year’s Oscar winner, “The King’s Speech,” said Holehouse. And none of this year’s best film nominees needed heavy rewrites.
When pressed by Holehouse and other risk assessors, film producers usually make the changes because insurance isn’t cheap. Premiums can run as high as 2 percent of a film’s budget, according to studio bosses. That can cost $3 million for a film like Martin Scorsese’s “Hugo,” with had an estimated $150 million budget. Premiums go much higher for car chases scenes, explosions or any risky maneuvers that catch Holehouse’s eye.
Holehouse, a 15-year Fireman’s veteran who headed Universal Picture’s risk management unit for 12 years, learned first hand the horrors of movie risks run amok while a consultant on Universal’s 1995 Kevin Costner film “Waterworld.” That movie famously went over its $100 million budget due to several calamities that included the destruction of its set in a storm off the coast of Hawaii.
Today, Holehouse and Fireman Fund’s other risk assessors spend weeks with producers, special effects managers, technical crew and others involved in production before the first camera rolls, especially the riskier ones.
For the 2007 special effects-filled film “Next,” starring Nicolas Cage, Holehouse spent weeks trekking daily to the bottom of Grand Canyon where many of the action scenes were filmed. In addition to accidents to the cast, Holehouse also watched for possible dangers to the wildlife or the environment .
By the time the cameras began rolling on the reptile-filled 2006 film “Snakes on a Plane,” Holehouse said he made sure that Samuel L. Jackson’s slithering co-stars were either garden snakes or defanged. “And there were a lot of rubber ones, too,” he added.
Holehouse also serves as consultant on cushier gigs – this year’s Grammy Awards, Super Bowls and the Lollapalooza music festival. But when the Oscar telecast begins on February 26. he will be at home watching on TV, instead of on stage alongside the producers of a film he may very well have helped get there.
(Reporting By Ronald Grover; Editing by Bob Tourtellotte)
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SALT LAKE CITY (AP) — Radioactive contamination from the Fukushima power plant disaster has been detected as far as almost 400 miles off Japan in the Pacific Ocean, with water showing readings of up to 1,000 times more than prior levels, scientists reported Tuesday.
But those results for the substance cesium-137 are far below the levels that are generally considered harmful, either to marine animals or people who eat seafood, said Ken Buesseler of the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution in Massachusetts.
He spoke Tuesday in Salt Lake City at the annual Ocean Sciences Meeting, attended by more than 4,000 researchers this week.
The results are for water samples taken in June, about three months after the power plant disaster, Buesseler said. In addition to thousands of water samples, researchers also sampled fish and plankton and found cesium-137 levels well below the legal health limit.
“We’re not over the hump” yet in terms of radioactive contamination of the ocean because of continued leakage from the plant, Buesseler said in an interview before Tuesday’s talk. He was chief scientist for the cruise that collected the data.
The ship sampled water from about 20 miles to about 400 miles off the coast east of the Fukushima plant. Concentrations of cesium-137 throughout that range were 10 to 1,000 times normal, but they were about one-tenth the levels generally considered harmful, Buesseler said.
Cesium-137 wasn’t the only radioactive substance released from the plant, but it’s of particular concern because of its long persistence in the environment. Its half-life is 30 years.
The highest readings last June were not always from locations closest to the Fukushima plant, Buesseler said. That’s because swirling ocean currents formed concentrations of the material, he said.
Most of the cesium-137 detected during the voyage probably entered the ocean from water discharges, rather than atmospheric fallout, he added.
Hartmut Nies, of the International Atomic Energy Agency, said Buesseler’s findings were not surprising, given the vastness of the ocean and its ability to absorb and dilute materials.
“This is what we predicted,” Nies said after Buesseler presented his research.
Nies said the water’s cesium-137 concentration has been so diluted that just 20 miles offshore, “if it was not seawater, you could drink it without any problems.”
“This is good news,” he said, adding that scientists expect levels to continue to decrease over time.
“We still don’t have a full picture,” Nies said, “but we can expect the situation will not become worse.”
___
Ritter reported from New York.
___
AP Science Writer Malcolm Ritter can be followed at http://www.twitter.com/malcolmritter
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TRENTON, New Jersey (AP) — Johnson Johnson’s longtime CEO Bill Weldon is stepping down as the health care giant’s top executive after an embarrassing string of recalls of everything from Tylenol to Benadryl that has cost the company hundreds of millions of dollars and consumers’ trust.
The maker of Band-Aids and biotech drugs said Tuesday that Alex Gorsky, vice chairman and head of the company’s largest business by revenue, will become CEO on April 26, the day of its annual shareholder’s meeting. Weldon, who as CEO since 2002 helped the company grow through acquisitions and licensing deals, will remain chairman of the board for now.
The change at the top comes as the company struggles to regain its footing after more than two dozen product recalls since September 2009, for reasons from bacterial contamination to liquid medicines that may contain tiny glass or metal. While there haven’t been reports of patients harmed by the recalled products, the sheer volume is likely unrivaled in the industry.
Congress has been probing JJ’s handling of the recalls, including a “stealth recall” in 2008 in which the company paid a third party to quietly buy up packages of faulty medication from stores. Federal regulators have had three of JJ’s factories under increased scrutiny for nearly two years, and one is being completely rebuilt.
JJ also faces lawsuits over the recalls, including one in which a family alleges its toddler died shortly after ingesting a “super dose” of Tylenol.
The recalls have hurt the company’s financial performance. Under Weldon’s tenure, JJ’s revenue slightly more than doubled to $65 billion last year. But lost sales from all the recalled products not on store shelves have cost the company more than $1 billion. JJ shares plunged from nearly $72 in early 2009 to $48 after the recalls began and have been stuck in the mid-60s for about a year.
Weldon has repeatedly assured investors and consumers that he had the problems under control, only to have another recall pop up. Last April, for instance, he charmed shareholders with a pledge that brighter days were coming. But as recently as last week, JJ announced that it would recall about a half a million bottles of infant Tylenol because of complaints about bottle tops meant to make doses easier collapsing in some cases.
As the company worked to resolve the problems, several executives below Weldon departed suddenly. One was Colleen Goggins, the former head of the consumer health business, where many of the recalls originated.
A handful of analysts had been calling for Weldon’s ouster, saying JJ had abandoned its highly touted corporate credo, displayed prominently at headquarters, that stresses responsibility to patients, doctors and nurses. Others said they thought the succession planning had long been in the works.
“While I am sure the board was not happy with the recalls that have plagued (J J), I am not convinced Mr. Weldon was pushed out due to the latest recall,” wrote Edward Jones analyst Linda Bannister.
The departure of Weldon, who has spent his entire 41-year career at JJ working his way up to chief executive, is being described by the company as normal succession planning. Weldon had repeatedly said he had no plans to leave unless asked to do so by the board of directors, which has long been loyal to him. But late Tuesday, Weldon, 63, said in a statement: “I look forward to the transition of leadership.”
“The way I read it is, he wouldn’t have left on his own if he didn’t think the company was on its way to recovery,” said Miller Tabak Co. analyst and fund manager Les Funtleyder.
Gorsky and Sherri S. McCoy, who heads both the pharmaceutical and consumer businesses, had been considered the most likely successors to Weldon after both were named company vice chairmen in January 2011. McCoy will become vice chairman of the executive committee and report to Gorsky once he becomes CEO.
Gorsky leads the company’s medical devices and diagnostics unit, which JJ claims is the largest business of its kind in the world. But besides that, he oversees 140 manufacturing facilities around the world. He’s also in charge of both government affairs and policy, and the company’s venture capital subsidiary, called the Johnson and Johnson Development Corp.
“I’m honored that the board has placed such confidence in me, and I am also aware of the serious responsibilities that come with this office,” Gorsky, 51, said.
Pharmaceutical manufacturing expert Girish Malhotra said he considered the management shake-up at JJ an overdue firing of Weldon. But Malhotra wrote that the heads of manufacturing and accounting should also be fired, and the board dismissed.
“How a global icon of care and quality could not control its practices is just beyond imagination,” he wrote. “I am not sure Mr. Alex Gorsky would be able to clean the house quickly to restore confidence in the company. Time will tell.”
LOS ANGELES |
LOS ANGELES (Reuters) – Viola Davis knew she had big shoes to fill when she agreed to play the role of a lowly black maid to a rich white family in 1960s Mississippi in “The Help”.
They included those of her mother, her late grandmother and thousands of African-American women who were maids themselves, many of whom would rather forget those years. Although Davis is now neck-and-neck with Meryl Streep for the best actress Oscar, she says her mother has yet to see “The Help.”
“It’s painful. You have a whole generation of women who don’t want to be reminded of the past,” Davis, 46, said.
Therein lies the paradox at the heart of “The Help” and its chances for Oscars. It was a surprise summer box-office hit that exposed old, but not forgotten, racial divides in the United States. Its popularity could cause Oscar voters to choose it as the year’s best movie, but the ugly history it replays might make them look the other way and cast a ballot for another nominee, especially frontrunner romance, “The Artist.”
Based on the 2009 best-selling novel by Kathryn Stockett, “The Help” is the tale of a young white woman in Jackson, Mississippi who in 1963 asks African-American maids to help her write a book about their experiences working for white families in the early stages of the civil rights movement.
Among movie fans, “The Help” has shown the greatest popular appeal of the nine films vying for best movie. With a $206 million global box office – most of it from North America – and supported by fans of more than 10 million books sold worldwide, “The Help” was one of the top 15 movies of 2011.
Myrlie Evers-Williams, a former chair of the NAACP whose civil rights activist husband Medgar Evers was murdered in 1963 in Mississippi by a white supremacist, called it the “most outstanding and socially relevant” movie of 2011.
In Hollywood, it has brought a slew of acting awards for its star, Davis, and supporting actress Octavia Spencer, who plays a sassy maid with an unusual method for vengeance through cooking. It has four Oscar nominations, including best motion picture.
Given the film’s wide cultural impact and its shock top prize at the Screen Actor’s Guild awards last month, “The Help” could walk off with the best picture Academy Award.
“If there is a jawdropper on Oscar night, that is where it will come. I think ‘The Artist’ is way out front but ‘The Help’ is the sneaky underdog that is beloved and often that is what makes a winner,” said Tom O’Neil of awards site TheEnvelope.com.
“It is not a movie with big Hollywood names. (But) it is widely-regarded as a well-crafted movie with an important message,” he said.
STEREOTYPE OR CULTURAL TOUCHSTONE?
But not everyone shares the enthusiasm, particularly parts of the African-American community. Some 70 years after Hattie McDaniel became the first black person to win an Oscar (for her role as a maid in “Gone With The Wind,”) critics say Hollywood is feting another film about the subjugation of black women.
Ida E. Jones, national director of the Association of Black Women Historians wrote in an open statement that far from being a progressive story of triumph over injustice, the way “The Help” depicts black maids is a “disappointing resurrection of Mammy – a mythical stereotype of black women who were compelled either by slavery or segregation, to serve white families.”
Nevertheless, the film has had a huge cultural impact in the U.S. since its release last August. Michael Taylor, film producer and chair of film and television production at the University of Southern California, said “The Help” reminded Americans that discrimination is not a thing of the past.
“It comes at a time when people in this country had begun to think that we have an African-American president so maybe we don’t need to deal with race relations anymore.
“But then along comes this movie which reminds us that maybe we need to take another look because we do in fact live in very segregated worlds,” Taylor told Reuters.
If Davis and Spencer win best actress and supporting actress Oscars, they will join a small group of African-Americans to have won the honor including Halle Berry (“Monster’s Ball”) the only black female to have won in the lead actress category.
Davis was painfully aware of the responsibility on her shoulders when she signed up to play Aibileen Clark, a self-effacing maid who lovingly raises the children of her white employers but is forced to use a bathroom outside their home.
“I thought doing the movie was important because the maid hadn’t been humanized before. I felt she remained a cardboard cut-out,” Davis said. “Now I feel like my mother and my grandmother’s lives have been acknowledged.
“There were so many followers of the book, so many people who had lived this life, who knew these people, so automatically you had big shoes to fill,” she added.
O’Neil said Davis has emerged as a clear front-runner for Oscar, despite admiration for Streep and her “sledgehammer” performance as Britain’s Margaret Thatcher in “The Iron Lady”.
“Voting for Davis feels important, as if you were embracing a significant message sociologically and historically,” he said.
As for Spencer, who plays outspoken maid Minny Jackson, O’Neil said she had an air of Oscar inevitability about her after sweeping the supporting actress awards this season.
“It is the one award that the film really deserves because she is the one who strikes out among the downtrodden and gets revenge in a shocking way. Her clever defiance and her enduring spirit is what the message of the movie is really all about,” O’Neil said.
(Editing by Bob Tourtellotte)
LOS ANGELES |
LOS ANGELES (Reuters) – Michael Jackson’s doctor should not be freed pending an appeal of his involuntary manslaughter conviction because he is a flight risk and has shown no remorse for his part in the singer’s death, prosecutors argued in court papers on Tuesday.
The attorneys said Dr. Conrad Murray, who is serving four years in jail, should be denied his bid for freedom at a Los Angeles court hearing set for Friday.
Prosecutors David Walgren and Deborah Brazil said there was “complete uncertainty” over whether Murray would remain in California or flee if allowed out on bail.
“Based on his failure to accept responsibility for the decisions he made, his complete lack of remorse and lack of insight into the danger of his criminally negligent conduct, he remains a danger to the community,” they added.
Murray was held criminally negligent in the June 2009 death of the “Thriller” singer after admitting giving him the powerful anesthetic propofol and sedatives as a sleep aid. He did not testify at trial and denied culpability.
Murray asked in January to be released on bail or put under house arrest until his appeal is heard, saying that a hearing could take over a year.
The judge in the case will hear arguments from both sides on Friday.
(Reporting By Jill Serjeant; Editing by Bob Tourtellotte)
NEW YORK |
NEW YORK (Reuters) – The movie studio that controls the rights to “The Godfather” has sued the estate of its creator Mario Puzo, accusing his heirs of wrongfully authorizing new book sequels to the fictional mafia family’s story.
Paramount Pictures studio, in a lawsuit filed in Manhattan federal court on February 17, accused the estate of Puzo, who wrote 1969 bestseller “The Godfather,” of approving sequels to the Oscar-winning movies without the studio’s permission and in violation of copyright agreements.
The lawsuit said a 2002 agreement between the studio and the Puzo estate allowed for the publication of only one sequel novel to the movies. That book, “The Godfather Returns” by Mark Winegardner, was published in 2004.
Despite the agreement, the Puzo family opted to publish a second novel called “The Godfather’s Revenge,” the lawsuit said, and is planning a third book for release this year called “The Family Corleone.”
“Far from properly honoring the legacy of ‘The Godfather,’ the unauthorized “The Godfather’s Revenge” tarnished it, and in the process, also misled consumers in connection with advertising, marketing, and promotional material related to the first and second sequel novels,” the lawsuit said.
An attorney for the Puzo family, Bertram Fields, said Paramount did not have control of book publishing rights and called the lawsuit “hogwash.”
“Paramount’s conduct in launching this attack against the children of Mario Puzo is reprehensible, they should be ashamed of themselves,” Fields said.
Fields said the lawsuit was a schock because he had written to Paramount advising the studio of the upcoming book publications but had heard nothing back.
The 1972 movie “The Godfather” was directed by Francis Ford Coppola and won three Oscars. Puzo, an Italian-American crime writer who died in 1999, also co-wrote the screenplays for all three Godfather movies.
The Paramount lawsuit said the Puzo estate is now being controlled by Mario Puzo’s son, Anthony.
The case is Paramount Pictures Corporation v. Anthony Puzo, U.S. District Court, Southern District of New York, No. 12-1268.
(Reporting by Basil Katz; Editing by Bob Tourtellotte)
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