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Saturday, September 22, 2012
Italian police report 'Catch Me If You Can' ruse
ROME (AP) ? Italian police describe it as a real-life sequel to "Catch Me If You Can," the hit movie starring Leonardo DiCaprio in the true story about an ingenious con artist masquerading as a commercial airline pilot.
An unemployed 32-year-old Italian man was stopped at Turin's Caselle airport on suspicion he successfully used false IDs, a cap and uniform to convince a crew he was a pilot and let him fly for free inside the cockpit aboard a commercial flight from Munich, Germany, to Turin, Carabinieri paramilitary police said Saturday.
Police said two real pilots flew the Air Dolomiti plane on the flight in April. The man, who wasn't identified, didn't touch the controls while in the cockpit. Police caught up with the man at the Turin airport terminal Wednesday after tailing him for months and receiving a tip. On his Facebook profile, the man also falsely bragged he was a commercial pilot and claimed he was promoted to captain's rank while still young.
A police statement said the suspect was cited for suspicion of putting at risk the security of air transport and "usurping a title," and was allowed to stay free on his own recognizance while the investigation continues.
"On at least one occasion in 2012, pretending to be a pilot of a foreign commercial airline, and with a fake name, he succeeded in flying as the third pilot in the cockpit," the statement said.
When police caught up with him, the suspect was dressed in a pilot's uniform, but without any company logo on it, and was sipping coffee at a bar near the check-in area in the terminal and hadn't passed through security. A police spokesman, who declined to be identified, said it didn't appear that the man was planning on using the same ruse that day and that it wasn't known if he had pulled off the trick on any other flights.
Air Dolomiti is part of the German airline Lufthansa.
"We know the case," Lufthansa spokesman Christoph Meier said. He declined to give any details, but insisted that nobody, not even a staff pilot, would be able to fly aboard one of the carrier's planes without having a ticket, indicating that the Italian might have had a passenger ticket.
Italian police said the suspect, after they confronted him, led them to a garage, where officers found piles of neatly pressed white shirts with epaulets, black trousers and jackets, similar to pilots' uniforms, and fake IDs, which were seized by authorities.
In the 2002 movie, directed by Steven Spielberg, DiCaprio portrays a real-life character, a young man who successfully forges millions of dollars' worth of checks through various guises, including as a pilot for now defunct Pan American Airways. So skilled was he that he won the grudging admiration of the FBI which chased after him, and eventually the U.S. agency sought his help in nabbing other check forgers.
___
AP reporter Juergen Baetz contributed from Berlin.
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HBT: NL Cy Young race down to wire
The National League?s Cy Young favorites both added to their cases Saturday, with the Nationals? Gio Gonzalez beating the Brewers for win No. 20 of the season and the Mets? R.A. Dickey going eight strong to defeat Miami for his 19th victory.
Gonzalez held the Brewers to two runs ? both unearned ? over seven innings in a 10-4 rout. The runs came after a Bryce Harper error in the sixth. Gonzalez allowed just three hits and walked one in lowering his ERA to 2.84.
Dickey took a shutout into the ninth, only to get charged with two runs after Jon Rauch gave up a three-run homer to John Buck. That took Dickey?s ERA from 2.58 to 2.66, but he still holds the NL lead over Clayton Kershaw (2.70) and Kyle Lohse (2.71).
Dickey was also robbed of a three-run double or triple on a terrific play from Bryan Petersen in the sixth. You can watch the video here. It would have been Dickey?s first extra-base hit since 2010 and just the third of his career.
That Dickey has such a big edge in innings pitched over Gonzalez ? 220 to 193 1/3 at the moment ? should be a determining factor in the Cy Young race. However, if Dickey ends up stuck on 19 wins and Gonzalez finishes as the NL?s only pitcher with 20, it?s possible the left-hander will take home the hardware.
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Friday, September 21, 2012
EA seeks gaming ubiquity across models and platforms ? Mobile ...
Electronic Arts has survived in the cut-throat gaming business since 1982. And it plans to keep its console games alive while diverting resources to the fast growing mobile and social gaming world, company senior vice president Nick Earl said today.
Electronic Arts, the 30-year old company that made its name on console games before entering the more modern, hot selling mobile gaming market, feels it makes sense to keep fielding games across all platforms and business models. ?To be sure, Nick Earl, the senior vice president in charge of EA?s Global Mobile and Social Studios group, is himself partial to mobile, but he won?t write off the good, old-fashioned console games that some of us cut our teeth on either.
?I think people will snack all day [on mobile or social games] and have a full meal on the console at night,? Earl said at GigaOM?s Mobilize 2012 Conference on Thursday. ?EA, in case you?re not a gamer, offers such games as Madden NFL, Resident Evil, SIMs3, and FIFA 2013.
With upwards of $4 billion in revenue, EA is in position to place many bets. But he also acknowledged that size and installed base have their downsides. For example, it took the company a long time to come around on the freemium game question. The company watched freemium model unfold for some time before making its move. ?An aircraft carrier takes a long time to turn,? he said. ?We were a little hesitant to wean ourselves off a great business and cut over to a new model. Face it, it?s scary.?
But the advantage can be huge. Freemium games ? where people play for free and then may or may not update to paid versions or buy virtual items in the game ? attract droves of new users. ?And once they?re interested, ??you can monetize them from a penny a head to $10,000, $20,000, $30,000. Yes. We do have whales,? he said.?Just like Las Vegas.
He remains on the fence on the value of HTML5 as a platform for gaming compared to native apps, but again,?he hasn?t written it off.
It will take 12 to 18 months for HTML5 performance to get up to snuff for games in terms of performance, he said. ??Will there be a holy war between web-based gaming and mobile apps? Maybe,? he said. But again, he placed his chips on all the slots; ?Maybe but we?re preparing for both.?
Check out the rest of our Mobilize 2012 coverage here, and the live stream can be found here.
Source: http://gigaom.com/mobile/ea-seeks-gaming-ubiquity-across-models-and-platforms/
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India government regains its muscle with reforms
In this Tuesday, Nov. 23, 2010 file photo, Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh listens to a speaker during a conference in New Delhi, India. Manmohan Singh's coalition has splintered and his government is fighting for survival. But the Indian prime minister, who has been criticized for presiding meekly over a corrupt government, is suddenly being hailed as a bold, powerful leader. Since pushing through a battery of unexpected economic reforms in mid- Sept. 2012, and refusing to back down in the face of protests and political threats, Singh appeared to have rejuvenated a government thought hopelessly paralyzed. (AP Photo/Manish Swarup, File)
In this Tuesday, Nov. 23, 2010 file photo, Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh listens to a speaker during a conference in New Delhi, India. Manmohan Singh's coalition has splintered and his government is fighting for survival. But the Indian prime minister, who has been criticized for presiding meekly over a corrupt government, is suddenly being hailed as a bold, powerful leader. Since pushing through a battery of unexpected economic reforms in mid- Sept. 2012, and refusing to back down in the face of protests and political threats, Singh appeared to have rejuvenated a government thought hopelessly paralyzed. (AP Photo/Manish Swarup, File)
FILE - In this Friday, May 1, 2009 file photo, Trinamool Congress party leader Mamata Banerjee, left, gestures as Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, right, attends an election campaign at Howrah, India. Manmohan Singh's coalition has splintered after Banerjee protested the decision to allow foreign retail chains to come into the country and demanded an immediate rollback or she would pull out of the coalition. But since pushing through a battery of unexpected economic reforms last week, and refusing to back down in the face of protests and political threats, Singh appeared to have rejuvenated a government thought hopelessly paralyzed. (AP Photo/Sucheta Das, File)
NEW DELHI (AP) ? Manmohan Singh's coalition has splintered and his government is fighting for survival. But the Indian prime minister, who has been criticized for presiding meekly over a corrupt government, is suddenly being hailed as a bold, powerful leader.
Since pushing through a battery of unexpected economic reforms last week, and refusing to back down in the face of protests and political threats, Singh appeared to have rejuvenated a government thought hopelessly paralyzed.
"We have been faulted in the last few months of not being adequately a doing government. Now the time has come that we are doing something, and we hope that everybody who cares for this country and the new generation will join in," Law Minister Salman Khurshid said Friday.
A day after a national strike by opponents of his economic program, Singh got a political breather Friday when a regional party opposed to the reforms said it would continue to support the government from outside the coalition. Singh prepared to address the country Friday night to explain his actions.
The turnaround for the soft spoken 79-year-old economist has been shocking.
"He made up his mind that he's going to push through his economic reforms agenda, even if it means he was going to lose power," said Dileep Padgaonkar, a veteran journalist and political analyst.
Padgaonkar said Singh was looking to rescue his legacy and reclaim the glow of his most famous achievement two decades ago when as finance minister he led wholesale reforms widely credited with sparking India's economic rise.
In the past few years, his government was battered by scandals, including the irregular sales of cellphone spectrum and coal blocks that India's auditor said cost the country billions. The opposition protested by paralyzing Parliament, making it impossible for the government to pass many bills. Bureaucrats, fearing they would get caught up in the next scandal, stopped making decisions, freezing business.
The Trinamool Congress, an important coalition partner, regularly blocked decisions. Its leader, Mamata Banerjee, torpedoed an about-to-be-signed water treaty with Bangladesh and fired the national railway minister, who was from her party, when he presented a budget including the first fare increases in nearly a decade.
A low point came last year when the government decided to allow foreign retail chains to come into the country ? and then suspended the decision two weeks later after Banerjee protested.
Meanwhile, India's economy, which officials had recently hoped would hit double-digit growth, was sputtering. The rupee had plunged in value and the country's huge deficit was putting it under threat of a possible ratings downgrade.
Last week, Singh's government responded. It cut the subsidy on diesel fuel by 5 rupees (10 cents) a liter and placed limits on cooking gas subsidies. It agreed to let in foreign retailers, loosened rules on foreign investment in airlines and TV and agreed to sell off stakes in four state owned companies.
The Indian Express newspaper said in an editorial the reforms were not likely to have much immediate impact, but "they are a crucial statement of intent."
The moves sparked outrage from opponents who fear Indian jobs will be lost if large U.S. and European retailers enter the market.
"(Singh) is out to destroy the interests of small traders and farmers," said Sitaram Yechuri, a lawmaker from the communist party.
Jai Prakash, a student at a protest rally in New Delhi, said the economic package showed "politicians are not bothered about the welfare of millions of poor people."
Banerjee demanded an immediate rollback or she would pull out of the coalition. The government ignored the threat, setting the decisions into law Thursday.
Singh's new reforms have been compared with his support for a U.S.-Indian nuclear deal that ended the country's nuclear isolation but nearly brought down his government near the end of his first term in 2008.
That doesn't look likely, at least for now. Though Singh will preside over a minority government without Trinamool, he maintains the support of two parties outside the coalition.
And it is likely that without the mercurial Banerjee the government might go further, possibly opening up the insurance sector to more outside investment and reducing sugar subsidies for the poor. At the same time, the government has sought to lighten the burden on the poor with a tax cut for cooking gas, and media reports said it planned to release 10 million tons of stored grain into the market to bring down food prices.
Zoya Hasan, a political analyst with New Delhi's Jawarhalal Nehru University, said she might not agree with what Singh has done, but he has made himself into India's most influential prime minister since its founding leader, Nehru.
"(He) has brought about a huge change," she said.
___
Follow Ravi Nessman on Twitter at ?www.twitter.com/ravinessman
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Thursday, September 20, 2012
Analysis: 'Manufactured' fury behind Muslim protests
Akhtar Soomro / Reuters
Protests ignited by a controversial film that ridicules Islam's Prophet Muhammad spread throughout Muslim world.
By Jim Maceda, NBC News
News analysis
Updated at 7:53 a.m. ET: CAIRO ? It's been just over a week since hundreds, perhaps a thousand, angry and offended Egyptians gathered outside the U.S. Embassy's gates in Cairo. They carried Islamist banners and chanted, "The only God is God and Muhammad is his Prophet."
At one point perhaps two dozen of the more brazen protesters scaled the wall and breached the embassy grounds. They lowered and destroyed the U.S. flag and raised a black, Islamic flag in its place. They fled when security guards (not the Egyptian police) fired warning shots over their heads.
This amounted to little violence, but the act itself was the psychological equivalent of taking a beachhead. Within hours reports emerged that a similarly sized group had stormed the U.S. Consulate in Benghazi, Libya. Some were calling it a copycat protest, but it was much more perilous: Four Americans were killed in the melee, including the U.S. ambassador.
Within 48 hours the world would witness angry protests unfolding at U.S. embassies, businesses and symbols of power in more than 20 countries.
Protesters scaled the walls of the U.S. Embassy in Cairo and pulled down the American flag during a protest over what they said was a film produced in the United States that insulted the Prophet Muhammad. NBC's Richard Engel reports.
This paroxysm of protest ? and violence ? had begun in Cairo. But what, really, began there?
Much of the mainstream media has played it as a spontaneous reaction to a disgusting film clip which denigrated Muslims and happened to be made and promoted in the USA.
But New York Times editorialist Ross Douthat argued it had nothing to do with a "genuine popular backlash," but everything to do with old-style power politics. For Jim Clifton, chairman of the pollster Gallup, it wasn't about religion or politics, but rather the desperate expression of young Arab males, deeply humiliated because they couldn't find jobs.
'Political manipulation'
Egyptian analysts seem to be more in agreement: Many protesters outside the U.S. Embassy were genuinely offended by the film. But the real driving force behind the protest ? in Cairo and Benghazi ? were radical Islamist groups who know how to exploit rage for political gain.
Actors and the assistant director of the film "Innocence of Muslims" told NBC News that the original spoken lines in the screenplay were dubbed over without their knowledge. NBC's Mike Taibbi reports.
"There are still a lot of questions that need to be answered," said Mona Eltahawy, an Egyptian journalist. "For instance, why after two months of being on YouTube did this film suddenly explode on the anniversary of 9/11? That is political manipulation and manufactured outrage that the right wing is all too happy to use.''
Egypt issues arrest warrants for Terry Jones, Coptic Christians over anti-Islam video
By "right-wing" Eltahawy means ultra conservatives ? often called Salafists ? who practice a strict, puritanical form of Islam and make up the fastest-growing Islamic political and social movement in the world. On the night of the Cairo embassy attacks, the Salafists saw an opportunity to flex their muscles.
"A lot of people went to the U.S. Embassy not just because of the film, and after the film died down, it wasn't about the film anymore," Eltahawy explained. "They went because of anti-U.S. sentiment, because they know in this region how easy it is to fan the flames of anger."
French officials are preparing for a potential violent backlash as a satirical magazine defends its decision to publish cartoons mocking the Prophet Muhammad. NBC's Michelle Kosinski reports.
Dr. Gamal Abdel Gawad, a highly respected Egyptian political analyst, agrees.
"I don't think it was spontaneous," he told NBC News. "People were gathering in one place at a certain time of day, so there was some mobilization behind it.''
Actress sues, says she was fooled into appearing in anti-Muslim movie
And it's clear to Gawad who did the mobilizing. "Radical Salafist groups orchestrated it to express their views and embarrass the [more moderate] Muslim Brotherhood because of competition between Islamic groups."
Post Arab-Spring power play
What's enfolding in Egypt ? and to a large extent in Libya ? is not just a series of isolated power plays. In both countries the leaders who emerged from the Arab Spring are struggling to eke out a political center in order to govern their new democracies, while under extreme pressure from more radical Islamist ? sometimes jihadist ? forces. Everything is still at stake.
This has led some Egyptians ? like Eltahawy ? to worry that their 18-month-old revolution will be hijacked by the extremists.
"I'm hoping that this right-wing drive of the past days is the dying pangs of a group that understands that the revolution was started by us, the majority, and we remain very much the majority."
Crowds of angry protesters showed up in Kabul, Afghanistan and Jakarta, Indonesia. The violent uprising followed a deadly weekend marking the deaths of eight International Security Assistance Force members. NBC's Atia Abawi reports.
Gawad is more sanguine about the future. "The revolution is over. The president is in power, and Egyptian political parties are busy preparing for elections and campaigns. The radical groups can't get significant numbers elected," he said. Still, as dramatic scenes over the past week have shown, those groups ? often armed ? can wreak havoc.
Egyptian President Mohammed Morsi seemed to give ground to the Salafists, even leaving the country at the height of a standoff between stone-throwing protesters and riot police for diplomatic meetings abroad.
Finally, last Saturday, he gave the order to clear out the protesters and appeared on TV calling on Muslims to protect foreign citizens and property. Some called it a turning point.
Now that a Paris-based satirical magazine has published cartoons of a naked Prophet Muhammad, will Egyptians respond with silent indignation, peaceful marches or be the first to storm their French Embassy?
Jim Maceda is an NBC News foreign correspondent based in London and currently on assignment in Cairo. He has covered the Middle East since the 1970s.
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