Dans une publicité surprenante, Michael Douglas appelle ses compatriotes à dénoncer les fraudeurs financiers. Le FBI peut compter sur l’interprète de Wall Street.
L’hôpital se moquerait-il de la charité? Pour Michael Douglas absolument pas. Pourtant, la prestation du héros sans foi ni loi de Wall Street 1 et 2, en porte-parole du FBI dans la chasse aux délinquants de la bourse, nous laisse un peu cois.
Dans un spot très sobre diffusé sur les chaînes américaines, l’acteur qui vient de vaincre son cancer rappelle a ceux qui l’auraient oublié qu’il a bien été un requin de la finance mais que tout ceci n’était que fiction. Dans la réalité, Michael Douglas est un Américain prêt à tout pour le bien de son pays. Gordon Gekko au placard, l’acteur prône aujourd’hui «l’intégrité des marchés financiers». Il met en garde les futurs investisseurs qui se laisseraient tenter par un «deal trop beau» et leurs conseille d’alerter immédiatement leur bureau local du FBI.
De la dénonciation, ni plus ni moins, pour mettre à mal les fraudes du système économique américain, voilà la nouvelle arme imaginée par le gouvernement. Une façon de faire surprenante, portée par un acteur charismatique: les Etats-Unis ont encore de quoi nous surprendre…
Click:electronic components distributor Depuis son divorce d’avec Seal, Heidi Klum avait tenu à rester très discrète. Dans l’édition de mai du magazine Allure, le top allemand ouvre son cœur… Et pas seulement son coeur.
Trente-huit ans, quatre enfants et un corps de rêve. Heidi Klum est fière d’afficher sa plastique sans chirurgie aucune dans les pages d’un grand magazine. Pour Allure et sous prétexte de parler beauté, l’ex-ange de Victoria’s Secret en a profité pour parler autant de la beauté de son corps que celle de son âme. Elle confie qu’elle a parfois douté de sa capacité à devenir mannequin. «J’avais de trop gros seins, trop de hanches et j’étais trop lourde» confie Heidi Klum qui rêvait surtout d’être top pour la Haute couture, mes que les formes justement généreuses ont menée vers d’autre podiums.
Pas de Botox ni d’opération pour la jolie maman qui promet de ne pas y toucher «même à 65 ans». Mais autant dire qu’à l’aube de ses quarante ans, Heidi Klum a peu de soucis à se faire quant à la dégradation de son outil de travail. Les photos dans le magazine Allure l’attestent. Sans maquillage et sans retouche, la belle plante prouve qu’elle est loin d’être fanée.
Son cœur, lui, en a pris un sacré coup au moment de son divorce d’avec Seal. «Parfois la vie vous joue un mauvais tour alors que vous pensiez avoir conclu un marché avec elle» confesse-t-elle. Si dans la vie d’Heidi Klum «tout ne se passe pas comme prévu», aujourd’hui, sa seule priorité est de poursuivre son rêve «d’élever beaucoup d’enfants, d’avoir un grand jardin avec un trampoline et d’autres choses sympas du genre».
Quatre semaines après son accouchement, la it-girl Sienna Miller a fait sensation dans les rues de Londres. La belle est apparue sublime, tour à tour portant son bébé dans une écharpe de portage ou la promenant dans sa poussette de compétition.
Sienna Miller goûte enfin aux joies de la maternité! A 30 ans, celle qui a passionné les tabloïds anglais avec sa love affair on-off avec Jude Law a trouvé un équilibre aux côtés de son compagnon, l’acteur de 26 ans Tom Sturridge. Et pour la première fois depuis son accouchement en juillet dernier, la jolie blonde s’est essayée à quelques apparitions remarquées comme l’a révélé People. Plus fusionnelle que jamais avec sa petite Marlowe, Sienna a opté pour l’écharpe de portage, inspirée des traditions africaines, pour garder son bébé près de soi, lui donnant son petit doigt à sucer entre deux cuillerées de glace… -pour elle, la glace!
Dans une version plus familiale, Miss Miller a également privilégié la poussette dernière génération que tous les jeunes parents connaissent bien – et qui a remplacé dans le cœur des futures maman le 2.55 de Chanel -, surtout quand il s’agit de l’édition limitée griffée Missoni. Mais si toutes les mummy fashionistas n’avaient d’yeux que pour ce modèle de poussette Bugaboo, les fans de l’actrice ont pu admirer sa ligne de sylphide vite retrouvée. Quelques semaines seulement après avoir donné naissance à sa fille, Sienna a renoué avec une silhouette bombesque, à l’instar de sa consoeur Victoria Beckham, ou encore du top Alessandra Ambrosio…
Qui a dit que maternité était forcément synonyme de laisser-aller?
Navracsics named as Hungary’s European commissioner
Appointment deepens Jean-Claude Juncker’s problem of securing gender balance in the next European Commission.
Viktor Orbán, prime minister of Hungary, has nominated Tibor Navracsics, the foreign minister, as Hungary’s European commissioner.
Navracsics is a close aide to Orbán, whose chief of staff he became in 2003. A political scientist, he had served as Orbán’s communications director during the first Orbán administration in 1998-2002.
Click here for the full list of nominees for the next Commission
In 2006, Navracsics entered Hungary’s parliament and took over as leader of the parliamentary group of Fidesz, Orbán’s centre-right party, which was then in opposition. He was appointed deputy prime minister and minister for public administration and justice in 2010, when Orbán won a landslide victory in a general election.
As minister for public administration and justice, Navracsics was in charge of many of the reforms that put Hungary on a collision course with the European Commission. At the same time, he is seen as a more moderate and centrist figure than Orbán.
Hungary has signalled interest in the enlargement and neighbourhood policy portfolio in the Commission, for which there seem to be few other candidates. Orbán and David Cameron, the UK’s prime minister, were the only EU leaders to vote against the appointment of Jean-Claude Juncker as president of the Commission, which is likely to affect Hungary’s negotiating position in terms of securing a desirable portfolio.
The 48-year-old Navracsics is of ethnic Croatian background and speaks the language formerly known as Serbo-Croatian; he knows the Western Balkans quite well.
His appointment deepens the problem facing Juncker, the Commission’s president-elect, of ensuring that enough women serve in his administration. Of the 16 confirmed nominations, just one is a woman.
Navracsics’s appointment had been widely expected and Hungary was unlikely to nominate a woman: there are no female members of the cabinet and the share of female MPs is among the lowest in Europe.
The centre-right Flemish MEP tells the employment committee that she will strengthen social indicators in the EU’s economic programme.
Marianne Thyssen gave a sure-footed performance in front of her fellow MEPs on Wednesday (1 October) and made a clear effort to allay concerns over an erosion of social protection in Europe. T
he nominee of Belgium, a Flemish Christian Democrat, Thyssen has been nominated to be the next European commissioner for employment, social affairs, skills and labour mobility. She focused largely on the latter two categories, in a likely effort to address concerns from the left about this portfolio going to a politician from the centre-right. “I am a convinced supporter of a social market economy, where freedom and responsibility go hand in hand.
We don’t have to choose between competitiveness and social fair-handedness,” she told MEPs. “I want employees, workers, to be able to contribute their labour to the creation of wealth in such conditions that will guarantee their dignity, their fundamental rights and their opportunities.” She said that employment and social policies needed to be much more present in the European semester, the EU’s system of peer review of public finances.
She agreed that ‘social indicators’ should be strengthened in the semester exercise – and, in particular, that such indicators should play a greater role in the country-specific recommendations. As an MEP herself, Thyssen’s frequent promises to involve the Parliament more in employment policy were probably genuine. She said she wants the Parliament to play a greater role in the European semester.
“Even before we have the annual growth survey, we need to hear the Parliament’s views,” she said. Indeed, while speaking she sometimes seemed to forget that she will not be an MEP over the next five years. On the maternity-leave directive, which the Parliament has passed but member states are blocking, she said: “In the Parliament we were talking about 22 weeks; that’s too much as far as the Council is concerned. We may need to be less ambitious.”
It was unclear whether the ‘we’ referred to MEPs, or to the EU as a whole. One issue that came up again and again at the hearing was the gender gap in pay. For all her concern over the issue, Thyssen was unable to suggest what the EU can do specifically to address it. “I doubt whether it can be done through legislation, but the agreements we have must be implemented,” she said.
She pointed to rules that say salaries have to be transparent, that the average pay for men and women has to be public. The youth-employment initiative launched by Council President Herman Van Rompuy last year was another policy that came up often during the hearing. Thyssen said that this project would be one of her top priorities, pointing out that much had been done such as front-loading money and exchange of best practices.
But member states needed more help with implementation. By the end of the hearing, one could have been forgiven for forgetting that Thyssen is not from the centre-left. Granted, a Flemish Christian Democrat is not exactly the same as one from Poland. But Thyssen presented herself as someone who wants to preserve the European social- welfare model, and centre-left MEPs seemed comforted.
Employers’ associations left the hearing more sceptical, disappointed with a lack of specific plans about how to cut red tape and tax structures that they say make it difficult for employers to hire people. It does not help that Thyssen comes from one of the countries where it is most difficult to hire.
“The commissioner needs to introduce policies to drive job creation in the new reality of a low-growth environment,” said Denis Pennel, managing director of Eurociett, hopeful that Thyssen might yet be an ally. “She has a golden opportunity to iron out labour-market imperfections and create a properly functioning employment market for all EU citizens.” Eurociett wanted to see firm commitments on driving up labour mobility within the EU, supporting co-operation between public and private employment services and getting rid of red tape.
Read the live blog from the hearing – as it happened
The European Parliament will begin a series of 27 confirmation hearings of the nominated European commissioners on Monday (29 September). The hearings will take place over six days in Brussels.
The MEPs will start their questioning with Karmenu Vella from Malta, who has been assigned the portfolio of environment and fisheries, and Cecilia Malmström from Sweden, who is up for the role of commissioner for trade. Those hearings will take place in two separate rooms at the Parliament at 2.30pm.
The seven designated vice-presidents will be the last to be questioned, on 6 and 7 October (with the exception of Kristalina Georgieva who will have her hearing on 2 October).
Each hearing is expected to last for three hours, followed by an hour of debate among the MEPs. Each committee will then have 24 hours to decide whether to recommend approving or rejecting the nominee. The full Parliament will vote in Strasbourg on 21 October on whether to confirm or reject the college of commissioners. Nominees cannot be rejected individually, but the Parliament has the power to reject the college as a whole.
Vicky Ford, a British Conservative MEP who chairs the internal market committee, said this week that she expects the committee deliberations to take longer than 24 hours. One issue that has not been resolved, she said, is whether MEPs will be able to ask follow-up questions.
Nominees expected to face difficult hearings include Vella, Slovenia’s Alenka Bratušek, Spain’s Miguel Arias Cañete, Britain’s Jonathan Hill, and Hungary’s Tibor Navracsics.
The Parliament has rejected commissioner nominees in the past. In 2004, the civil rights committee voted against the nomination of Italy’s Rocco Buttiglione as commissioner for justice, freedom and security because of his conservative views on women’s rights and gay rights. José Manuel Barroso had to withdraw his proposed college line-up and replaced Buttiglione with Franco Frattini. Ingrida Udre, the Latvian nominee, was also replaced, by Andris Piebalgs.
In 2009, the Bulgarian nominee, Rumiana Jeleva, was forced to withdraw after MEPs questioned her suitability as a commissioner and her financial interests.
Some MEPs believe that the institution must claim another scalp this time around. But the political dynamics in this term make that unlikely. The two largest groups in the Parliament, the centre-right European People’s Party (EPP) and the centre-left Socialists and Democrats (S&D), have joined together in a ‘grand coalition’ that, with the additional participation of the liberal ALDE group, gives them a majority in the Parliament.
MEPs from the centre-left and centre-right will be hesitant to vote against the other group’s nominees for fear of upsetting this delicate balance. The Liberals, who have five commissioner nominees, will also be wary of rocking the boat.
Ford said this week that her European Conservatives and Reformists group (ECR) does not believe it is the role of MEPs to reject nominees. This would leave only the Greens, the far-left GUE/NGL and the Europe of Freedom and Direct Democracy groups to vote against nominees.
The Kenyan international has departed London for Canada after failing to work his way into Jose Mourinho’s plans
Tottenham midfielder Victor Wanyama has joined the Montreal Impact after falling out of favour at the north London club.
The 28-year-old joins the Impact on a free transfer as a Designated Player on a three-year deal.
Wanyama will link up with the Impact once his medical is completed and international clearance is processed.
More teams
He spoke of his excitement at a fresh start alongside the Impact’s famous coach, ex-Arsenal legend Thierry Henry, where he will become the club’s second Designated Player alongside fellow midfielder Saphir Taider.
“I’m really happy to join an exciting club like the Montreal Impact,” Wanyama said.
“MLS continues to grow every season and I’m looking forward to bringing further awareness to this team, city and league across Africa.
“When I spoke to Thierry and he told me he wanted me to join him in Montreal, I didn’t have to think twice. He has always been a player that I’ve admired, and I am really happy to get the opportunity to work with him and to play a part that can ensure that the Montreal Impact have an improved season and hopefully reach the ultimate stages of the competitions in which we compete.
“I think the Saputo family and the management team in Montreal have a great plan in place and I am hoping I can make a great contribution to the success of this project.”
Wanyama joined Tottenham in 2016 – after three seasons at Southampton – and became an important part in Mauricio Pochettino’s midfield.
He made 97 appearances for Spurs across four years, with the majority of his playing time coming in his first season before knee injuries kept him consistently on the sidelines.
Despite Tottenham’s midfield issues, Wanyama had only made four appearances for the club this campaign and wasn’t brought into first-team calculations once Mourinho replaced Pochettino as manager in November last year.
Wanyama’s new side began their MLS campaign with a 2-1 win over the New England Revolution on March 1, while the club also advanced in the Concacaf Champions League by taking down Deportivo Saprissa.
It remains to be seen whether the Kenya international will be available for their next league match against FC Dallas on Saturday or the club’s CCL clash with Olimpia on March 10.
Violeta Bulc: not your average European Commission candidate
What do we know about the new Slovenian nominee to be European commissioner for transport?
Much has been said about Violeta Bulc’s colourful interests. But when it comes to her politics, she is a blank slate.
She started her first political post only a few weeks ago. She was appointed by Miro Cerar to be part of his new government, which took office in September. She was made a deputy prime minister without portfolio, responsible for development, strategic projects and cohesion. She had joined Cerar’s eponymous party, the Party of Miro Cerar, shortly before Slovenia’s general election in May.
When news of her nomination reached Brussels, many hurried to her website and blog and quickly gleaned that Bulc is not your average European commissioner. Bulc, 50, studied as a shaman and is a trained fire-walker. Her blog explains her interest in positive energy forces, something more common in the bay area of California where she was educated than in the corridors of power in Brussels.
Her unconventional past was the object of much attention on Twitter in the hours following her nomination. But detractors beware – Bulc is a black belt in taekwondo and has taught self-defence in the past.
Bulc’s background is fairly conventional in parts, however. She is an entrepreneur who in 1999 founded her own successful telecoms firm called Telemach. She was born in 1964 in Novo Mesto, Yugoslavia, and studied computer science and informatics at the University of Ljubljana. She then obtained a masters of science in information technology from Golden Gate University in San Francisco, California. She worked in Silicon Valley for four years before moving back to Slovenia in 1994, after it became an independent country.
Bulc’s political persuasions are hard to ascertain, as she had not yet had a chance to start work in the Slovenian parliament before being nominated as European commissioner. The Party of Miro Cerar has no European affiliation, although there have been media reports in Slovenia that Cerar is about to join ALDE. His governing coalition is centre-left.
ALDE appears to be quite confident that Bulc is a liberal, with liberal leader Guy Verhofstadt tweeting after the news broke last Friday that she is a “strong liberal candidate”. She does have some connection to Slovenia’s now mostly moribund Liberal parties. She was married to Aleš Bulc, whose father Marko Bulc was a politician in the late 1980s connected with the Slovenian Liberals.
With her background, it might have made more sense to give Bulc the digital agenda portfolio. She has no experience with transport policy, something she freely admitted to transport committee chair Michael Cramer, a German Green, when they met on Wednesday night at the European Parliament. Cramer is sceptical that she has what it takes and considers her hearing on Monday (20 October) to be very important. “She has a lot of homework to do over the weekend,” he said after the meeting.
Bulc is bound to face many of the same questions as Alenka Bratušek, focusing on her experience – or lack of it – and the way in which she was nominated. In nominating Bulc, Miro Cerar used the same parliamentary procedure that Alenka Bratušek used to overrule her own cabinet when she nominated a list of three names including her own. Seven ministers in Cerar’s cabinet voted against Bulc’s nomination, six ministers voted for. But three ministers were absent. Cerar counted these three ministers as having voted yes. When Bratušek did this same thing, Cerar heavily criticised her.
However, MEPs are unlikely to bring this up at Monday’s hearing. Nor are they likely to bring up the shamanism or fire-walking, at least not in a critical way. The deal for her to become transport commissioner and for Maroš Šefčovič to become vice-president for energy union has been painstakingly worked out with the Parliament’s two largest groups, the EPP and S&D, according to Parliament sources. ALDE considers her a liberal, and though they may be upset about her not being given the vice-presidency allocated to Bratušek, they are unlikely to kick up a fuss about it. Green MEPs have indicated they already like her personality and the ECR has not registered any objection.
MEPs are likely to go easy on her on Monday, considering she has been given only four days to learn about a policy area she has no background in. As long as she demonstrates basic competence, and does not fall into her predecessor’s trap of repeating canned answers, she should be okay. Her excellent English skills should help her in this regard.
Une nouvelle bande-annonce de Batman The Dark Knight Rises vient de paraître sur Internet. La vidéo montre une ambiance sombre, comme attendue, mais aussi de nombreuses scènes de jour, dont une, impressionnante, sur un stade de football. Batman s’annonce vraiment comme LE film le plus attendu de 2012.
Depuis mai dernier et la divulgation d’une première photo du prochain Batman, on savait que Warner allait faire patienter les fans jusqu’à la sortie du film, en juillet 2012, par petites touches, par révélations savament distillées pour ne pas trop en dévoiler, mais suffisament pour piquer la curiosité des futurs spectateurs. C’est donc le cas avec cette nouvelle bande-annonce parue sur internet et qui confirme toutes les promesses placées dans ce Dark Knight Rises.
L’originalité de la vidéo est qu’elle ne montre finalement pas beaucoup d’images de Batman en costume. Elle permet surtout de découvrir les nombreux personnages secondaires, parmi lesquels Marion Cotillard, Anne Hataway, Matthew Modine, Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Tom Hardy mais aussi Michael caine, Gary Oldman, et l’incontournable Christian Bale, que l’on verra pour la dernière fois dans le rôle du justicier masqué.
D’autres séquences, même furtives, donnent l’ambiance, forcément sombre. Mais pas uniquement. Des scènes d’extérieur, notamment dans un stade de football, prouvent que Christopher Nolan, comme il l’a fait dans ces deux précédents films Batman The Dark Knight et Inception, maîtrisent aussi bien les scènes à grand spectacle que celles plus intimistes.
Visuellement, ce Batman s’annonce donc époustouflant. Il va falloir attendre encore sept mois avant de voir le résultat sur grand écran.
Après plusieurs mois de rumeurs de séparation, la chanteuse pop acidulée officialise sa séparation avec l’acteur anglais Russell Brand. C’est ce dernier qui a annoncé leur rupture dans un communiqué officiel.
Divorce, le mot est lâché. Alors qu’on les pensait encore amoureux malgré les rumeurs persistantes, que les tourtereaux déjantés avaient même enchaîné les démentis via Twitter ou encore sur les plateaux télé, Katy Perry et Russell Brand ont décidé de divorcer après un peu plus d’un an de vie commune. «Malheureusement Katy et moi mettons un terme à notre mariage. Je la chérirai toute ma vie et je sais que nous resterons amis», a déclaré Russell dans un communiqué officiel. Une demande de divorce déposée jeudi à la Cour Supérieure de Los Angeles, pour cause de «différences irréconciliables».
2012 annonce donc une nouvelle ère pour Katy et Russell qui naviguent à présent en solo. Déjà pendant les fêtes, Katy avait été aperçue sans son beau en train de surfer la vague hawaïenne, tandis que l’acteur de 36 ans prenait le déjeuner de Noël dans un pub de Cornouailles. Les amants terribles d’Hollywood –elle bien connue pour ses looks déjantés et son amour des perruques de couleur, lui, ancien bad boy dépendant aux drogues dures-, s’étaient mariés lors d’une cérémonie à leur image, en Inde, le 23 octobre 2010.
En août dernier, les tabloïds accusaient Russell Brand d’avoir trompé Katy Perry, et mettaient en lumière un couple qui battait de l’aile. Quelques mois plus tard, Katy, chanteuse du tube I Kissed a girl et son chevelu de mari se quittent bel et bien. Une histoire qui ne se termine pas en feu d’artifice. Un comble pour l’interprète de Firework…