The Hobbit: Richard Armitage Talks Preparations For Playing Thorin Oakenshield

British actor Richard Armitage admitted it wasn’t a walk in the park to play a J.R.R. Tolkien character in Peter Jackson’s reimagining of “The Hobbit,” the first installment of which is on its way into theaters.

Upon touching down in New Zealand, where the trilogy was shot, the cast had a lot of character preparation to do.

PLAY IT NOW: Martin Freeman Discusses The Hobbit’s ‘Good Chemistry’ & Playing Bilbo Baggins

“We arrived in February 2011 and we went straight into a training program, which was called ‘Dwarf Bootcamp,’ which was literally boots — these huge boots. We learned how to walk, we wrestled with each other, we did archery together, we did sword fighting, hammer fighting, horse riding — everything you could possibly think of,” Richard, who plays Thorin Oakenshield in the film told Access Hollywood at the film’s junket.

In addition, the cast, which includes his former “Cold Feet” co-star James Nesbitt as Bofur, found ways to get to know each other better off set.

VIEW THE PHOTOS: The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey — New York City Premiere

“We went round to each other’s houses and we cooked food together, we went to the pub and got drunk together, so there was an incredibly great bonding time between the dwarves,” he said.

Richard had plenty of experience sword fighting and horse riding in the BBC America series “Robin Hood,” but it was something else that came in handy during the long days on set.

“I’d done a number of shows where I’d had to use sword fighting and I’d also done horse riding. I’d also pulled guns out of my pocket. That was less useful,” he laughed, likely referring to his recent role in the PBS-import series “MI-5,” where he played a British spy. “But, yeah, you draw on everything. I’d worked at the Royal Shakespeare Company, so the vocal work was really useful to kind of pull that from there. I’d worked in a circus, there were… all sorts of things that were really useful, but the one thing that I do have — for lack of talent — is stamina and that’s the one thing I think everybody needed on this job.”

VIEW THE PHOTOS: Meet ‘The Hobbit’ Cast!

An imagination was useful also, but Richard said what turned out on the big screen was still wilder – and more beautiful – than he dreamed of.

“So many moments… Actually, apart from the eagles — which every single time I’ve seen this film absolutely blows my mind and I can barely keep the tears back and [it has] nothing to do with the pathos of the scene, just that feeling of flight moves me — is the throne of Aragorn, in the beginning of the prologue,” he told Access of the moment that moved him most. “When it got to [filming] that scene, I walked on and… it was just a green cross on the floor with a tiny green chair… [But in the film], they just made this incredible, almost space aged, sort of suspended seat in the middle of this stalagmite. It just blows my mind when I see that.”

VIEW THE PHOTOS: The Brit Pack: Hot Shots Of Stars From The UK!

“The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey” hits theaters on December 14, 2012, followed by “The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug,” on December 13, 2013 and “The Hobbit: There and Back Again,” on July 18, 2014.

– Jolie Lash

Copyright 2012 by NBC Universal, Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

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‘The Hobbit’: Like One Bad Video Game

Perhaps the most exciting thing about Peter Jackson‘s landmark, blockbuster Lord of the Rings films was that they made fans, through a combination of stunning landscapes and intricate special effects and soaring music and dramatic spectacle, feel as though we were seeing an almost impossible elevation of the potential size and scope of movies. Here was a rich, dense, sprawling series of films that thundered like myths, that were breathtaking in their realization of some pretty huge ambitions. Sure, they were massive corporate projects that earned lots of people millions of dollars, but to the regular moviegoer they were feats that proved the majesty of the movies, the potential to tell enthralling stories that also played like art. And so it’s hugely disappointing, if not all that surprising, that Jackson’s first foray back into the land of Middle Earth, The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey, is such a sullenly, basely commercial and junky affair, a movie that feels not crafted with Jackson’s seemingly divine inspiration but by the hands of studio executives. Perhaps the reason that Warner Bros. is forgoing the usual console video-game tie-ins for simple mobile games is because the damn movie already looks like a video game, and not a very fun one at that.

RELATED: ‘The Hobbit’ Trailer Needs to Get Out of the Shire

The Lord of the Rings series succeeded aesthetically because it was such an elegant, painting-like wonder to behold. The textures and palettes all had the look of a particularly vibrant illustrated story book, the kind of immersive vision that exists somewhere between imagination and the real world. For The Hobbit, though, Jackson chose to film at a high frame rate and with Real 3D technology in mind — because 3D movies are doing well these days and, hell, doesn’t hurt that the tickets cost more — but the results are frequently hideous. Those among us who have bought shiny new flatscreen TVs over the past few years are likely familiar with the dreaded “Soap Opera Effect,” which turns what should be stunning, glossy images into cheap-looking messes, all strange movement and lighting, like any network soap or cheap British show. (Think Children of Men looking like Torchwood.) It’s the problem of technology over-thinking or over-performing, and it is on startling, gruesome display in The Hobbit. When you’re wearing the 3D glasses (and admittedly sitting a little off to the side), this hugely expensive movie looks like it was shot on a nice handheld digital camera on the cheap. Actors stand in strange contrast to the digital backgrounds behind them, motion looks too slick or unnatural. Gone are the somber vistas and rugged terrain, replaced by eye-aching shine and plastic-y smoothness. The most special effects-heavy sequences look very much like the non-playable parts of modern video games — the exposition bits that can amp up the graphics a bit because they don’t have to worry about the randomness of play, the stuff you see in the commercials, right before the “rated T for teen” part. I don’t know if I just had a bad projector or what, but I spent the bulk of this long movie distracted by how dreadful everything looked. With a few small exceptions — The Shire glows with lovely green, a mountain cave fight/chase sequence is bracingly rich — this is a dismally unattractive movie, featuring too many shots that I’m sure were lovely at some point but are too often ruined and chintzified by the terrible technology monster.

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So on its aesthetic merits, The Hobbit comes up more than short. The trouble is, it’s not rescued by many narrative successes. Jackson has taken largely from the first third of J.R.R. Tolkien‘s novel — about an expedition to reclaim a lost dwarf kingdom from a dragon — but he’s also added in some elements found in appendices detailing an expanded universe that Tolkien included in an edition of The Lord of the Rings. This is partly to flesh out the story as Jackson believes Tolkien meant it to be, but it’s also meant to satisfy the needs of a supersize film trilogy based on one mere book. And so we get several pointless and uninteresting diversions, mostly about dwarves and their bitter enemies the orcs, that read exactly like the filler they are. Jackson is trying to flesh out dwarf mythology, because we spend so much of our time with these little guys, but it feels tediously synthetic, as if there are two movies competing for attention with neither one getting its due. We go to the goblin caves of The Hobbit and then, upon deliverance from that dark place, are thrust right into some kind of honor-and-revenge-based conflict with a snarling, giant, one-armed orc. It’s all very crowded and strangely hurried for a movie that, all told, takes its sweet time.

RELATED: No One Likes Peter Jackson’s New ‘Hobbit’ Footage

I suspect that another of Jackson’s reasons for including all this extra dramatic battling is that, on its own, The Hobbit is something of a children’s book. We’ve got wacky, food-crazed dwarves, a mean old dragon, and a funny little guy to take us along on the journey. Jackson doesn’t deny his movie the kiddie flourishes — there’s snot humor and butt jokes and lots of other goofy stuff involving some trolls, plus two little musical numbers involving all the dwarves — but he then tries to complement them with the big, booming faith and honor stuff and it never properly congeals. One moment we’re on a sprightly children’s adventure, the next we’re talking in big fashion about all that warlike serious business. It’s a discordant mix, and I’d imagine it will leave both kids and adults out in the cold.

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The film is not without its bright spots, rare as they may be. Ian McKellen is a feisty, spirited, mysterious Gandalf as ever before, and Martin Freeman nicely and genially projects everyday hobbit-ness, even if he’s a tad underused in the film. (Yeah, in the movie called The Hobbit, there’s barely any time to focus on the darn Hobbit.) Cate Blanchett turns up once more as the ethereal elf Galadriel, lending the movie a cool classiness and a welcome dose of feminine energy. And, of course, we’re back, for one mesmerizing scene, with our beloved Gollum, so winningly and creepily played by Andy Serkis, and here yet another marvel of computer innovation. In some ways Gollum’s innate cartoonishness works better now than it did in the original trilogy, which is probably the only time that can be said of this movie. There are one or two moments in Gollum’s pivotal scene where he’s given a bit too much modern humor to play, but all told he’s the most welcome sight in the film. Maybe that’s just the newfound purist in me, yearning for the old days, but I suspect it has more to do with Gollum being the only genuinely realized character we’ve so far encountered in this new trio of films. Everyone else is a snoozy lesser version of someone else, especially the ridiculous bloodthirsty orc leader, who snarls and growls like something out of the Underworld movies. Sometimes, in the jumble of the The Hobbit‘s many cluttered and dull action scenes, the frantic blur looks like any sequence from one of those schlocky ’00s B-movies; all roughly hewn CGI clashing around nonsensically, with this orc fellow leading the charge.

RELATED: ‘The Hobbit’ Might Be Three Movies Now?

Despite all the technical advancements, if we can call them that, most moments in The Hobbit feel like Peter Jackson is sadly trying to make all those familiar LOTR elements work for him once more, without ever really being able to reignite the old flame. The supposedly awe-inducing visit to the elf city of Rivendell is a ho-hum experience in this new frame-rate-ruined world. A silly battle sequence involving a wizard, a silly Radagast the Brown, riding around pell-mell on a rabbit-drawn sled looks like an interstitial from late-era Super Mario. Even Elijah Wood, appearing briefly as Frodo, looks strange — a pale ghost of himself, as if stitched in from another movie by some forlorn and desperate hand. The film is inevitably resonant with memories of the original trilogy, and little about it can hold up to the comparison. There’s too much effort in the wrong places — action instead of story, technical tricks instead of actual design — and the constant rhythm of arbitrary event after arbitrary event becomes tiresome well before the film’s two hours and forty minutes have lurched to a halt. I’m sure there are kids who will like this wan, distracted effort — they might not yet have anything else to compare it to, depending on their age — but as a human who remembers what came before, I’m afraid The Hobbit left me nothing but frustrated, sad, and tired. Frustrated that these big-budget visionaries seem to consistently feel they have to taint their earlier masterpieces with techno-junk followups, sad that once magical lands now flicker cheap and garish in my head, and tired at the prospect of two more of these things. I exited the theater trying to remind myself that Attack of the Clones was way better than Phantom Menace and that Revenge of the Sith was better still. I then realized how depressing it was that I was making that comparison. Oh, Middle Earth. What has become of you?

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Lawsuit claims A&E’s ‘Storage Wars’ show is rigged

LOS ANGELES (AP) — Some of the valuables found hidden in abandoned lockers on A&E’s “Storage Wars” have been added by producers to deceive viewers, a former cast member of the show claims in a lawsuit filed Tuesday.

David Hester‘s suit claims producers have added a BMW Mini and newspapers chronicling Elvis Presley‘s death to lockers in order to build drama for the show and that his complaints about the practices led to his firing.

Hester is seeking more than $ 750,000 in his wrongful termination, breach of contract and unfair business practices lawsuit. A&E Television Network declined comment, citing the pending lawsuit.

“Storage Wars” follows buyers who bid for abandoned storage lockers hoping to find valuables tucked inside.

“A&E regularly plants valuable items or memorabilia,” the lawsuit states. Hester’s suit claims he was fired from participating in the series’ fourth season after expressing concerns that manipulating the storage lockers for the sake of the show was illegal.

He claims that producers stopped adding items to his units after his initial complaints but continued the practice for other series participants. The lawsuit alleges entire units have been staged and the practice may violate a federal law intended to prevent viewers from being deceived when watching a show involving intellectual skills.

“Storage Wars” depicts buyers having only a few moments to look into an abandoned unit before deciding on whether to bid on it at auction. The lawsuit claims some of the auction footage on the show is staged.

Hester, known as “The Mogul” on the show, has been buying abandoned storage units and re-selling their contents for 26 years, according to the suit.

Nielsen Co. has ranked “Storage Wars” among cable television’s top-ranked shows several times since its 2010 debut.

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In Search of a Better Condom

It’s hard to believe, but the condom is still the only way to protect against pregnancy and HIV at the same time. But researchers say they believe they can develop a kind of 21st-century contraceptive that offers superior protection against pregnancy and sexually transmitted diseases and that people will like enough to use consistently.

A paper describing early work on the project was published earlier this month in the journal PLoS One. The research team, led by Kim Woodrow at the University of Washington, received a grant of nearly $ 1 million last month from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation to pursue the research.

The product is an electrically spun cloth with nanometer-sized fibers that can dissolve to release drugs, such as medications that prevent pregnancy and HIV infection. The drug-eluting fibers represent “multipurpose prevention technology,” a method that simultaneously prevents sexually transmitted infections and unintended pregnancy through a combined physical and chemical barrier.

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“Condoms and vaginal rings and IUDs have been around for a very long time,” Cameron Ball, a co-author of the paper and graduate student in bioengineering, told TakePart. “People would like more options. No one option will be the silver bullet. The idea is to have multiple options that people can choose for their lifestyle.”

Improved methods to protect against STDs and pregnancy are needed in both developing and developed countries. The spermacide nonoxynol-9 is highly effective at pregnancy prevention but promotes vaginal inflammation, which then increases the risk of STD transmission.

“What we’re hoping to provide is a method of drug delivery that could be used with a variety of drug compounds,” Ball says. “There are multiple products in the development pipeline to address this need. These are largely vaginal rings, but vaginal rings are limited in what they are able to deliver. They deliver compounds that are less water soluble. Using fibers allows you to work with multiple drugs with different properties. You can have combinations of pharmaceutical agents that you couldn’t necessarily have with a vaginal ring or with a condom.”

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During electrospinning, an electric field is used to launch a charged fluid jet through the air to create extremely delicate nanometer-scale fibers that stick to a collection plate. (One nanometer is about one 25-millionth of an inch.) The stretchy fibers are the platform for delivering medications in the same way that drugs are delivered through pills or gels. The fibers can also carry larger molecules, such as proteins and antibodies, that are hard to deliver through other methods. So far, the team has created a fabric that serves as a physical barrier to block sperm or to release drugs, such as contraceptives and antiviral medications.

The fabric dissolves within minutes, which is considered a benefit because it offers immediate and discreet protection. But the approach also allows for controlled release of multiple compounds, Ball says. Last year, a study aimed at preventing heterosexual HIV transmission using a gel with the drug tenofovir failed—the likely result of the drug’s strength fading by the time of sex.

“If you can have a longer-lasting gel with nanoparticles, that would be beneficial,” Ball says. “We’re trying to fill a niche in terms of product lifespan.”

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The cloth could be inserted directly into the body or used as a coating on vaginal rings or other products, Ball says. While the primary goal of the research is for products that can be used in places like Africa, where HIV transmission is especially high,  the technology could appeal to a wide range of societies and cultures.

“You could have fibers that stay in place for longer or be shaped in the shape of a diaphragm,” he says. “You could include herpes medication. Herpes prevention is somewhat controversial—it’s not clear whether taking herpes medications prophylactically will help prevent the spread of the virus. That is another application, potentially.”

Question: Do you think people want new ways to protect against pregnancy and sexually transmitted diseases? Tell us what you think in the comments.

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Shari Roan is an award-winning health writer based in Southern California. She is the author of three books on health and science subjects.

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HSBC guilty of ‘stunning failure’

11 December 2012 Last updated at 13:05 ET

Loretta Lynch, US Attorney: “Their US compliance department was woefully inadequate”

The US said “dangerous practices” at HSBC allowed the bank to pass money to “drug kingpins and rogue nations”, as it fined it $ 1.9bn (£1.2bn).

HSBC agreed the fine, the largest of its kind, earlier on Tuesday.

A US Senate investigation said the UK-based bank had been a conduit for drug barons and nations such as Iran against which it had sanctions, making it illegal to do business there.

HSBC admitted having poor money laundering controls and apologised.

Money laundering is the process of disguising the proceeds of crime so that the money cannot be linked to the wrongdoing.

US Assistant Attorney General Lanny Breuer said in a statement: “HSBC is being held accountable for stunning failures of oversight – and worse – that led the bank to permit narcotics traffickers and others to launder hundreds of millions of dollars through HSBC subsidiaries.

Another official said it was implicated in “wilful and dangerous” practices.

‘Sorry’

“We accept responsibility for our past mistakes,” said HSBC group chief executive Stuart Gulliver in a statement.

“We have said we are profoundly sorry for them, and we do so again.”

The bank said it had spent $ 290m on improving its systems to prevent money laundering and clawed back some bonuses paid to senior executives in the past.

Continue reading the main story

If HSBC had been indicted for these offences, that would have meant that the US government and others could no longer have conducted business with it, which would have been humiliating and highly damaging.”

End Quote

It also said it expected to reach an agreement with the UK’s Financial Services Authority shortly.

Last month it announced it had set aside $ 1.5bn to cover the costs of any settlement or fines.

The news followed the announcement of a similar but much smaller settlement with UK-based Standard Chartered bank, which will pay $ 300m in fines for violating US sanctions.

The cases are seen as part of a crackdown on money laundering and sanctions violations being led by federal government agencies and New York state authorities.

Senate criticism

The settlement had been widely expected following a report by the US Senate, published earlier this year, that was heavily critical of HSBC’s money laundering controls.

The report alleged that:

• HSBC in the US had not treated its Mexican affiliate as high risk, despite the country’s money laundering and drug trafficking challenges


• The Mexican bank had transported $ 7bn in US bank notes to HSBC in the US, more than any other Mexican bank, but had not considered that to be suspicious


• It had circumvented US safeguards designed to block transactions involving terrorists drug lords and rogue states, including allowing 25,000 transactions over seven years without disclosing their links to Iran


• Providing US dollars and banking services to some banks in Saudi Arabia despite their links to terrorist financing


• In less than four years it had cleared $ 290m in “obviously suspicious” US travellers’ cheques for a Japanese bank, benefiting Russians who claimed to be in the used car business

The report suggested HSBC accounts in Mexico and the US were being used by drug barons to launder money.

BBC business editor Robert Peston said that as big as the $ 1.9bn penalty looks, it could have been much worse.

“HSBC has signed a Deferred Prosecution Agreement for breaches of the US Bank Secrecy Act, the Trading with the Enemy Act and assorted money laundering offences. This is in effect putting the bank on probation,” he said.

“But if HSBC had been indicted for these offences, that would have meant that the US government and others could no longer have conducted business with it, which would have been humiliating and highly damaging.”

‘Failures’

The bank stressed that it had taken on new senior management since the time the problems happened.

Lord Green was chairman of HSBC from 2006 until late 2010 and is now Minister of State for Trade and Investment.

In a statement, his department said: “The report by the US Senate Sub-Committee sets out in detail the evidence submitted to it, and the action taken by HSBC to ensure compliance with US regulations at the time that Lord Green was group chairman. It is for HSBC to respond to this report.”

HSBC has announced it has appointed a former US official to work as its head of financial crime compliance, which is a new position.

Bob Werner was previously the head of the US Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) – the agency responsible for enforcing the US sanctions on countries including Iran.

He will be responsible for beefing up HSBC’s anti-money laundering and sanctions compliance systems.

It is unclear what impact the case will have on HSBC’s business. The bank is the biggest in Europe by market capitalisation, and made pre-tax profits of $ 12.7bn for the first six months of 2012.

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Corruption probe shrouds Quebec in new darkness

MONTREAL (Reuters) – Half a century ago, a new crop of Quebec leaders sparked the so-called Quiet Revolution to eradicate the “Great Darkness” – decades of corruption that kept Canada‘s French-speaking province under the dominance of one party and the Catholic church.

The revolution’s reforms, including cleaning up the way lawmakers were elected and secularizing the education system, seemed to work, paving the way for decades of growth, progress and prominence as Canada emerged as a model of democracy.

Fifty years later, a public inquiry into corruption and government bid-rigging suggests the province’s politics are not as clean as Quebecers had hoped or believed.

Since May, when the inquiry opened in Montreal, Canadians have been getting daily doses of revelations of fraud through live broadcasts on French-language television stations. Corruption involving the Mafia, construction bosses and politicians, the inquiry has shown, drove up the average building cost of municipal contracts by more than 30 percent in Montreal, Canada’s second-largest city.

Last month, Montreal Mayor Gerald Tremblay resigned as did the mayor of nearby Laval, Gilles Vaillancourt. Both denied doing anything wrong, but said they could not govern amid the accusations of corruption involving rigging of municipal contracts, kickbacks from the contracts and illegal financing of elections.

Tremblay has not been charged by police. Vaillancourt’s homes and offices have been raided several times by Quebec’s anti-corruption squad, which operates independently of the inquiry, but no charges have been filed against him either. Police said the raids were part of an investigation but they would not release further details.

“Quebecers lived for several years under the impression that they had found the right formula, that their parties were clean,” said Pierre Martin, political science professor at the University of Montreal. Now, he said, “people at all levels are fed up.”

The inquiry must submit its final report to the Quebec government by next October. It has exposed practices worthy of a Hollywood noir thriller – a mob boss stuffing his socks with money, rigged construction contracts, call girls offered as gifts, and a party fundraiser with so much cash he could not close the door of his safe.

“Even though we are in the early days, what is emerging is a pretty troubling portrait of the way public contracts were awarded,” said Antonia Maioni, director of the McGill Institute for the Study of Canada in Montreal.

Quebec’s Liberals, the force behind the Quiet Revolution, launched the inquiry as rumors of corruption swirled. The government then called an election for September, a year ahead of schedule, in what was seen as an attempt to stop damaging testimony hurting its popularity.

The tactic did not help. Jean Charest’s Liberals lost to the Parti Quebecois, whose ultimate aim is to take the French-speaking province, the size of Western Europe, out of Canada.

‘IT WASN’T COMPLICATED’

According to allegations at the inquiry, the corruption helped three main entities: the construction bosses who colluded to bid on contracts, the Montreal Mafia dons who swooped in for their share, and the municipal politicians who received kickbacks to finance campaigns.

In Quebec, the Mafia has been dominated by the Rizzuto family, with tentacles to the rest of Canada and crime families in New York and abroad. But recently the syndicate has been facing challenges from other crime groups in Montreal, according to the Toronto-based Mafia analyst and author Antonio Nicaso.

The reputed godfather of the syndicate, Vito Rizzuto, has been subpoenaed to appear before the commission, but the date for his testimony has not been set.

The hearings have zeroed in on four construction bosses and how their companies worked with the Mafia, bribed municipal engineers and provided funds for mayoralty campaigns in Montreal, the business capital for Quebec’s 8 million people.

“It’s not good for the economy,” said Martin. “It’s not good for any kind of legitimate business that tries to enter into any kind of long-term relationship with the public sector.”

Quebec’s anti-corruption squad has arrested 35 people so far this year, staging well-publicized raids on mayoral offices and on construction and engineering companies. The squad has arrested civil servants and owners of construction companies, among others.

“I now must suffer an unbearable injustice,” Tremblay said in a somber resignation speech earlier this month after a decade as mayor of Montreal, saying he could not continue in office because the allegations of corruption were causing a paralysis at City Hall.

Some of the most explosive allegations at the inquiry, headed by Quebec Superior Court Justice France Charbonneau, came from Lino Zambito, owner of a now bankrupt construction company, and from a top worker for Tremblay’s political party, Union Montreal.

Zambito, who is seen as one of the smaller players and who also faces fraud charges, described a system of collusion between organized crime, business cartels and corrupt civil servants, with payments made according to a predetermined formula.

“The entrepreneurs made money, and there was an amount that was due to the Mafia,” Zambito told the inquiry. “It wasn’t complicated.”

Zambito said the Mafia got 2.5 percent of the value of a contract, 3 percent went to Union Montreal and 1 percent to the engineer tasked with inflating contract prices.

Tremblay did not respond to emails requesting comment on the allegations of corruption at city hall.

A former party organizer, Martin Dumont, alleged the mayor was aware of double bookkeeping used to hide illegal funding during a 2004 election.

Dumont said the mayor walked out of the room during a meeting that explained the double bookkeeping system, saying he did not want to know anything about it.

Dumont also described how he was called into the office of a fundraiser for Union Montreal to help close the door of a safe because it was too full of money.

“I think it was the largest amount I’d ever seen in my life,” Dumont said at the inquiry.

GOLF, HOCKEY, ESCORTS

The inquiry also saw videos linking construction company players with Mafia bosses. In one police surveillance video, a Mafia boss was seen stuffing cash into his socks.

A retired city of Montreal engineer, Gilles Surprenant, described how he first accepted a bribe in the late 1980s after being “intimidated” by a construction company owner. Over the years he said he accepted over $ 700,000 from the owners in return for inflating the price of the contracts.

Another retired engineer, Luc Leclerc, admitted to bagging half a million dollars for the same service. He said the system was well-known to many at city hall and simply part of the “business culture” in Montreal. He also got gifts and paid golf trips to the Caribbean with other businessmen and Mafia bosses.

Gilles Vezina, who is currently suspended from his job as a city engineer, concurred.

“It was part of our business relationships to get advantages like golf, hockey, Christmas gifts” from construction bosses, he told the inquiry in mid-November.

The gifts didn’t stop there. Vezina said he was twice offered the services of prostitutes from different construction bosses in the 1980s or early 1990s, which he said he refused.

The accusations are jarring for a country that prides itself on being one of the least corrupt places in the world, according to corruption watchdog Transparency International. But experts say corruption in Montreal was something of an open secret.

“The alarm signals have been going off here for 20 years and no one has done anything,” said Andre Cedilot, a former journalist who co-wrote a book on the Canadian Mafia.

Quebec’s new government has introduced legislation tasking the province’s securities regulator with vetting businesses vying for public contracts and allowing it to block companies that do not measure up.

Anti-corruption activist Jonathan Brun was not optimistic.

“You’ve got to use modern technology,” said Brun, a co-founder of Quebec Ouvert, a group that wants to make all information about contracts freely available rather than asking regulators to oversee individual companies. “You’ve got to change the entire system if you really want to fight corruption.”

(Writing by Russ Blinch; Editing by Janet Guttsman, Mary Milliken and Prudence Crowther)

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Microsoft ups Surface production, to sell in more stores

SEATTLE (Reuters) – Microsoft Corp has stepped up manufacturing of the Surface tablet, its new device designed to counter Apple Inc‘s iPad, and will introduce it to third-party retailers this week.

The moves suggest Microsoft is seeing some demand for its first own-brand computer in the crucial holiday shopping season, although it has yet to divulge any sales figures.

“The public reaction to Surface has been exciting to see,” said Panos Panay, general manager of Microsoft’s Surface project, which forms part of the company’s Windows unit.

“We’ve increased production and are expanding the ways in which customers can interact with, experience and purchase Surface,” said Panay, but gave no details of how many extra units were being produced.

Panay did not mention names of retailers that will sell the Surface, but separately office equipment retailer Staples Inc said it would stock the tablet from Wednesday.

He said the Surface would also be on sale at retailers in Australia from mid-December, with more countries to follow in the next few months.

Since launch in late October, the Surface has only been sold by Microsoft itself, in its own brick and mortar stores in the United States and Canada and online in Australia, China, France, the UK and Germany.

The only Surface model available now – officially called Surface with Windows RT – runs a version of Windows created to work on the low-power chips designed by ARM Holdings, which dominate smartphones and tablets but are incompatible with old Windows applications.

It starts at $ 499 for the 32 gigabyte version plus $ 120 for a thin cover that doubles as a keyboard.

A larger, heavier tablet – called Surface with Windows 8 Pro – will be introduced in January, running on an Intel Corp chip that works with all Microsoft’s Windows and Office applications. Microsoft plans to price the new Surface from $ 899 for a 64 gigabyte version.

The world’s largest software company also said it would keep its chain of ‘pop-up’ holiday stores open into the new year and will convert them into permanent retail outlets or what it called “specialty store locations”.

Microsoft’s recent push into physical retail – following Apple’s great success – has resulted in 31 permanent stores plus 34 holiday ‘pop-up’ stores in the U.S. and Canada.

If Microsoft converted each of the temporary stores into permanent outlets it would have 65 stores, still well below Apple with almost 400 worldwide.

(Reporting by Bill Rigby in Seattle, Sruthi Ramakrishnan in Bangalore)

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‘Skyfall’ launches back to top spot with $10.8M

LOS ANGELES (AP) — The James Bond blockbuster “Skyfall” has risen back to the No. 1 spot at the weekend box office, taking in $ 10.8 million.

That brought its domestic total to $ 261.4 million and its worldwide haul to a franchise record of $ 918 million.

The top 20 movies at U.S. and Canadian theaters Friday through Sunday, followed by distribution studio, gross, number of theater locations, average receipts per location, total gross and number of weeks in release, as compiled Monday by Hollywood.com are:

1. “Skyfall,” Sony, $ 10,780,201, 3,401 locations, $ 3,170 average, $ 261,400,281, five weeks.

2. “Rise of the Guardians,” Paramount, $ 10,400,618, 3,639 locations, $ 2,858 average, $ 61,774,192, three weeks.

3. “The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn — Part 2,” Summit, $ 9,156,265, 3,646 locations, $ 2,511 average, $ 268,691,029, four weeks.

4. “Lincoln,” $ 8,916,813, 2,014 locations, $ 4,427 average, $ 97,137,447, five weeks.

5. “Life of Pi,” Fox, $ 8,330,764, 2,946 locations, $ 2,828 average, $ 60,948,293, three weeks.

6. “Playing For Keeps,” FilmDistrict, $ 5,750,288, 2,837 locations, $ 2,027 average, $ 5,750,288, one week.

7. “Wreck-It Ralph,” Disney, $ 4,859,368, 2,746 locations, $ 1,770 average, $ 164,402,934, six weeks.

8. “Red Dawn,” FilmDistrict, $ 4,236,105, 2,754 locations, $ 1,538 average, $ 37,240,920, three weeks.

9. “Flight,” Paramount, $ 3,130,305, 2,431 locations, $ 1,288 average, $ 86,202,541, six weeks.

10. “Killing Them Softly,” Weinstein Co., $ 2,806,901, 2,424 locations, $ 1,158 average, $ 11,830,638, two weeks.

11. “Silver Linings Playbook,” Weinstein Co., $ 2,171,665, 371 locations, $ 5,854 average, $ 13,964,405, four weeks.

12. “Anna Karenina,” Focus, $ 1,544,859, 422 locations, $ 3,661 average, $ 6,603,042, four weeks.

13. “The Collection,” LD Entertainment, $ 1,487,655, 1,403 locations, $ 1,060 average, $ 5,455,328, two weeks.

14. “Argo,” Warner Bros., $ 1,482,346, 944 locations, $ 1,570 average, $ 103,160,015, nine weeks.

15. “End of Watch,” Open Road Films, $ 751,623, 1,259 locations, $ 597 average, $ 39,989,766, 12 weeks.

16. “Hitchcock,” Fox Searchlight, $ 712,544, 181 locations, $ 3,937 average, $ 1,661,670, three weeks.

17. “Talaash,” Reliance Big Pictures, $ 449,195, 161 locations, $ 2,790 average, $ 2,397,909, two weeks.

18. “Taken 2,” Fox, $ 387,227, 430 locations, $ 901 average, $ 137,700,304, 10 weeks.

19. “Pitch Perfect,” Universal, $ 305,765, 387 locations, $ 790 average, $ 63,517,408, 11 weeks.

20. “The Sessions,” Fox, $ 218,973, 197 locations, $ 1,112 average, $ 4,948,342, eight weeks.

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Online:

http://www.hollywood.com

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Universal and Focus are owned by NBC Universal, a unit of Comcast Corp.; Sony, Columbia, Sony Screen Gems and Sony Pictures Classics are units of Sony Corp.; Paramount is owned by Viacom Inc.; Disney, Pixar and Marvel are owned by The Walt Disney Co.; Miramax is owned by Filmyard Holdings LLC; 20th Century Fox and Fox Searchlight are owned by News Corp.; Warner Bros. and New Line are units of Time Warner Inc.; MGM is owned by a group of former creditors including Highland Capital, Anchorage Advisors and Carl Icahn; Lionsgate is owned by Lions Gate Entertainment Corp.; IFC is owned by AMC Networks Inc.; Rogue is owned by Relativity Media LLC.

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More “fiscal cliff” talks but neither side giving ground

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The White House and House of Representatives Speaker John Boehner’s office held more negotiations on Monday on ways to break the “fiscal cliff” stalemate, although neither side showed any public signs that they were ready to give ground.

The talks gained urgency after Republican Boehner met at the White House with President Barack Obama on Sunday, raising hopes of progress in averting the onset of tax increases and spending cuts that kicks in on January 1 unless Congress intervenes.

But while striking a more conciliatory tone, both sides kept to a familiar script in the weeks-long standoff. Obama renewed his call for higher tax rates for the richest Americans, which most Republicans oppose, while Republican leaders urged Obama to submit a new offer with specific spending cuts he would back.

Economists say going over the fiscal cliff could throw the U.S. economy back into a recession.

On a road trip to Michigan to drum up support for his stance, Obama said he was willing to compromise on some things but not on his demand that Republicans support an increase in tax rates for the wealthiest 2 percent of Americans.

“What you need is a package that keeps taxes where they are for middle-class families, we make some tough spending cuts on things that we don’t need, and then we ask the wealthiest Americans to pay a slightly higher tax rate, and that’s a principle I won’t compromise on,” Obama said during a visit to an auto plant in Redford, Michigan.

Boehner spokesman Michael Steel said Republicans were still waiting for the president to make a new offer that identifies the spending cuts he will make in the deficit-reduction negotiations.

“The Republican offer made last week remains the Republican offer,” Steel said, adding the two sides were holding staff-level talks on Monday.

Boehner and the House Republican leadership submitted their terms for a deal to the White House last week, after Obama presented his opening proposal. Both sides seek to cut budget deficits by more than $ 4 trillion over the next 10 years but differ drastically on how to get there.

Boehner and Republicans oppose letting any tax rates increase and prefer to find new revenues by closing loopholes and limiting deductions. Republicans also want deeper spending cuts than Obama has offered in entitlements like the Medicare and Medicaid healthcare programs.

Democrats have insisted that tax rates for the richest must be nailed down before negotiating further on how to proceed with tax reform efforts or new spending cuts in entitlement programs.

‘A DEAL IS POSSIBLE’

“I can only say that the president believes that a deal is possible,” White House spokesman Jay Carney told reporters on the flight to Michigan. “But it requires acceptance and acknowledgement in a concrete way by Republicans that the top 2 percent will see an increase in their rates.”

Financial markets have calmed recently after a series of wild swings, when nearly every utterance from a politician about the looming budget crisis caused volatility in stock prices.

Polling shows most Americans would blame Republicans if the country goes over the cliff, and pressure has been building from some Republicans for Boehner to get an agreement quickly, even if it means tax hikes on the wealthiest.

Republican Senator Bob Corker of Tennessee called for a quick deal with the White House to allow an extension of the lower tax rates that have been in place for about a decade, except for the top two rates that Obama wants to raise.

“Right now there is no question in my mind the president has the slight upper hand in the negotiations,” Corker said on CNBC on Monday.

He said there was support among Senate Republicans for taking that step so the fiscal cliff negotiations could then shift to focusing on how to restrain the growing costs of Medicare and other entitlement programs.

“If you did it this week (agree to raising tax rates on the richest) you’d have the rest of this month to have the focus totally on entitlements,” said Corker, who has a record of reaching out to Democrats on major bills.

More conservative Senate Republicans, most notably Senator Tom Coburn of Oklahoma, also have signaled a willingness to let tax rates rise on higher-income groups.

Erskine Bowles, co-chairman of the so-called Bowles-Simpson deficit reduction commission, said he thought chances were improving for a deal.

“I think the atmospherics are getting so much better. We have kind of gotten out of Kabuki theater and gone to dancing the tango,” Bowles told CNBC on Monday. “Any time you start to tango you’ve got a chance.”

Bowles said he did not expect the president to give in on his demand that taxes rise for the top 2 percent of earners.

“I would almost guarantee that rates are going to go up for people in the top 2 percent,” he said.

U.S. stocks edged higher on Monday but moves remained muted as investors looked for any signs of movement on the fiscal cliff front.

The S&P 500 index has nearly retraced the 5.3 percent slide it suffered in the first seven sessions after the November 6 presidential election.

“The sentiment has definitely changed,” said Andrew Wilkinson, chief economic strategist at Miller Tabak & Co in New York. “The market has become somewhat desensitized to headlines out of Washington because the fear of the economy hitting a wall in 2013 if we don’t get a deal done has diminished.”

(Additional reporting by Steve Holland, Jeff Mason, Thomas Ferraro, Susan Heavey and Franklin Paul; Writing by John Whitesides; Editing by Alistair Bell and Eric Beech)

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With Chavez Ailing, Venezuela is Front and (More) Center

Is Chavismo, the brand of export-ready, nose-thumbing leftism practiced by Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez, much possible with him no longer in power?

Unlikely, says the market, which has bid up Venezuelan debt, sending benchmark yields to a five-year low, on speculation that the ex-paratrooper will be unable to complete his third term after acknowledging the return of his cancer. The country’s bonds are up 45 percent this year, the second-best showing in all emerging markets, next to tiny Côte d’Ivoire. The Caracas stock exchange—oxymoronic, if you think about it—is up nearly 300 percent year-to-date.

Since taking office in 1998, Chavez, 58, has expropriated more than 1,000 companies and pushed through price controls to turn South America’s biggest oil producer into an example of socialism.

On Monday, Chavez shuttled back to Cuba for further surgery after exhorting his countrymen to vote for Vice President Nicolas Maduro if he is unable to stay in office. Just two months after winning re-election for a third six-year term,“El Comandante” was out of the public eye for three weeks leading up to Dec. 7.

“Any successor, whether from the opposition, or handpicked by him, will be more moderate, more market-friendly than Chavez has been,” says Kathryn Rooney Vera, a macroeconomic strategist with Miami-based Bulltick Capital Markets.

The average yields on the South American country’s dollar debt fell to 9.4 percent on Dec. 6, the lowest since February 2008, after rising as high as 11.51 percent following Chavez’s reelection, according to the JPMorgan EMBI Global Index (JPM). The yield on Venezuela’s dollar bonds due 2027 is at its the lowest since November 2007, according to data compiled by Bloomberg.

“This is not Cuba, nor is it a monarchy where a king designates the next king,” remarked Henrique Capriles, the economically more moderate candidate who opposed Chavez in October, on Sunday. “The last word belongs to the people.” Translation: Capriles is raring for another chance at the presidency.

Venezuelan law stipulates that if Chavez cannot carry out his duties, his vice president would take over until the beginning of a new presidential term on Jan. 10. Should Chavez then not be able to attend his inauguration, the president of Venezuela’s National Assembly would assume power while elections are arranged within 30 days. If Chavez does take office but falls too ill within his first four years, his vice president would assume the presidency for 30 days while elections are held.

Venezuela remains one of the more peculiar stories in all emerging marketdom. Thanks to underinvestment by Chavez and state-owned Petróleos de Venezuela, the country has experienced declining oil production despite having the world’s largest proven reserves—an especially costly missed opportunity for an economy with such high fiscal deficits, under a ruler whose time in office has coincided with oil prices soaring from $ 10 a barrel to triple digits. Even so, Chavez has never defaulted on the nation’s external debt.

Bulltick’s Vera thinks a change of presidential power—particularly a Capriles ascension—could keep pushing down Venezuela’s benchmark borrowing costs to as little as a third of the yield they hit last year.

That speaks volumes about the clout one man has had on a nation’s reputation with markets. “To oversee 14 years of economic decay and still remain so popular …,” she says, “well, no one has Chavez’s charisma.”

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