This post has been updated with a new statement from MSF.
Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF)—also known as Doctors Without Borders—is considering taking the makers of a newly released Bollywood film to court.
The medical humanitarian organisation has alleged that the Hindi film Phantom has references to an aid group that has “aspects confusingly similar to MSF”—thereby putting thousands of its workers, including those in sensitive conflict regions, at risk.
“Such a blurring of the lines between fact and fiction can have real consequences for our ability to work in difficult places where our access depends on people trusting that we are neutral, impartial and independent organisation,” MSF said in an emailed statement.
“Misrepresentation of humanitarian organisations like MSF could threaten the lives of our patients, staff and undermine our ability to work, especially in the world’s most sensitive conflicts where people might not otherwise have access to medical care,” it added.
Phantom—produced by Sajid Nadiadwala and Siddharth Roy Kapur on a reported budget of about Rs40 crore—has already stoked controversy for its storyline, which involves an aid worker helping an Indian soldier to kill Pakistani militants.
The aid worker, played by actress Katrina Kaif, is seen using a rifle and a pistol in the film’s trailer:
Although the group confirmed that MSF’s name has not been directly used in the film, its lawyers have written to the producers of the film to remove all references to the humanitarian aid organisation and issue a disclaimer “to make clear that (it) is a purely fictional account.”
“Our requests have been unanswered and we were not able to watch the film before its release,” MSF said in reply to questions from Quartz. “After seeing the film our legal action is ongoing and we are continuing to explore legal possibilities to address the issue.”
In an earlier statement, the group explained that it has “a strict no guns policy” at all their clinics. “None of our staff would ever carry a gun. Any portrayal that suggests otherwise is dangerous, misleading and wrong.”
Established in 1971, MSF currently employs over 30,000 health professionals, and logistical and administrative staff across some 70 countries. Many staff members are hired locally, and the organisation has a policy of remaining neutral while operating in conflict areas such as Syria, Afghanistan and Yemen.
“If warring parties see aid organisations as being on one side of a conflict, we are less likely to gain access to those in need and more likely to be attacked,” MSF explains on its website.
Released on Aug. 28, the film has already drawn controversy after it was banned in Pakistan.
Hafiz Saeed, founder of the Lashkar-e-Taiba terror group, who is accused by India of masterminding the November 2008 attack in Mumbai, had earlier moved a Pakistani court seeking a ban on the film for showing both him and Pakistan in a negative light.
At the time of writing this post, Kapur’s UTV Motion Pictures and Nadiadwala’s Nadiadwala Grandson Entertainment had not responded to Quartz’s emails seeking comments. We will update the post if and when they respond.
There are moments when you open a new tabletop game and instantly know that it will be in heavy rotation with your friends and family for years to come. I had that moment again when I cracked open Monikers for the first time.
It's a box full of cards. Cards with names on them. Hundreds of names. The goal of the game is to get your team to guess as many of the names from the top of the deck as you can before time runs out.
It sounds simple, really. But it's who is on these cards that makes this game so special.
Mrs. O'Leary's Cow. LeVar Burton. The Earl of Sandwich. A honey badger. Frida Kahlo. Carl Sagan. The Stay Puft Marshmallow Man. Royal Tenenbaum. Clarence Thomas. Rasputin.
That's just a random stack, from near the middle of the stock deck as it came out of the box. I immediately started laughing. How, exactly, am I going to get my friends to name Brian Boitano in less than 60 seconds?
People get intimidated by regular old charades though. What makes Monikers so inviting is that everyone has a hand in selecting the cards in play.
Each player is dealt eight cards at the beginning of the game, and selects six to contribute to the stack of 40 to 50 that will comprise each round of play. Everyone knows they have a card or two in the deck that they're looking forward to, and that helps those who might be otherwise hesitant to participate.
Play proceeds in three rounds, each one progressively harder than the last. Round 1, you can use any words, sounds or gestures save the name itself. Round 2, you can only use one word. Round 3 you have to play charades. With a slightly competitive — and moderately intoxicated — group of friends, you'll get lots of fun out of this deck of 550 cards before you start wondering about an expansion.
On Cuba's version of Craigslist, a website called Revolico, you will find all the usual stuff: Bikes and cars for sale, job offers, apartments for rent, guitar lessons and old digital cameras. You'll also find something you probably wouldn't expect to find on a website: People selling internet access.
Planned Parenthood on Thursday gave congressional leaders and a committee that is investigating allegations of criminality at its clinics an analysis it commissioned concluding that “manipulation” of undercover videos by abortion opponents make those recordings unreliable for any official inquiry.
Vine is getting into music. With an update rollingout Friday, Vine will begin letting its users add music to their videos. The music will be selected and licensed by Vine — it's not yet clear whether you'll be able to dig into your private library to put "Bad Blood" over everything. Instead, after shooting a video, you'll be able to look through a selection of tracks that Vine has picked out. You can place a song over your clip however you'd like, but Vine is hoping that you'll use a feature it's made called "Snap to Beat," which will trim the music and video to the audio loop as perfectly as possible.
Avicii, Migos, and Odesza are among the first artists who will be included in Vine's "Featured Tracks." Vine is also pitching this as a way to discover new music. When a Vine video includes one of those tracks, a music note will appear beside it that you can tap to get information on the song and artist. Artists will also be able to include a link to wherever they choose, be it a social media profile, a website, or a music store, so that you can find out more about them. I'm not convinced that it'll be an amazing way to sell songs, but it should definitely make for more pleasantly loopable Vines.
One of the key executives behind Apple's Beats 1 radio has resigned just two months after the "worldwide, always on" service launched, reports The Financial Times. Ian Rogers was formerly the CEO of Beats Music and joined Apple along with fellow Beats executives Dr. Dre and Jimmy Iovine when the iPhone-maker bought the company in May last year. The FT says that Rogers' decision to leave Apple is unexpected, with the long-time music executive said to be moving to work in an unrelated industry for a company based in Europe.
The FT notes that Rogers was responsible for spearheading the development of free radio service Beats 1, hiring DJ Zane Lowe to front the station and shaping its varied shows and playlists. In a personal blog published the day before Beats 1 went live, Rogers wrote: "Seeing Apple Music on stage at WWDC this month [...] it was hard not to feel like the last 20+ years was leading to this day." Rogers repeatedly stressed the importance of curation and music discovery in music services, including in an interview with The Verge last year in January.
It's perhaps no surprise then that Beats 1 has been praised for its eclectic music, but it remains unclear how well Apple Music itself is attracting paying customers. Earlier this month, the company announced that the service had more than 11 million trial members (compared to 75 million non-paying Spotify users), although a third-party survey later claimed that 48 percent of people who sign up later stop using Apple Music. Apple has denied these figures, claiming their retention rate is 79 percent, but most analysts are waiting until October (when the service's three-month free trial will run out for most people), to properly judge its success.
Russell Munro and his wife created a working Optimus Prime cake that transforms from a truck into a robot for their son’s sixth birthday party. Munro posted a video of the cake in action at the party to the delight of the crowd, and also posted a separate video that shows the platform itself in action with the cake.
NEW YORK—As concerns about the health risks involved for youth players continue to rise, a new poll revealed Thursday that a growing majority of NFL players would not allow their sons to play preseason football. “Now that we know how dangerous it really is, how could I in good conscience let my 7-year-old son go out there and play in a preseason football game?” said Pittsburgh Steelers linebacker Lawrence Timmons, echoing the sentiments of many NFL players who told reporters that the potentially devastating health costs associated with participating in a full four-game preseason outweigh any reward, especially at the professional level. “The fact of the matter is that we just didn’t understand the full risks of preseason football back when I first started playing. I love this sport, but I’m not going to let my child put his long-term health on the line just to play ...
Musicians/producers/djs Diplo and Skillrex, who have been working together as Jack Ü, recently teamed up with former teenybopper Justin Bieber to create “Where Are Ü Now“, an amazingly produced multi-layered song. In speaking with The New York Times, both Diplo and Skillrex broke down sections of the song, explaining how they developed different sounds along with the arrangement of multiple beats, rhythms and times.
People are always trying to avoid digital distortion, but we always like using it. We’re literally always trying to find something you haven’t heard before. You took a little pattern and create it into a whole different sound, but it still has the elements of some human thing, like a warmth in the track.
Disney Consumer Products and Lucasfilm have announced an expansive global unveiling of Star Wars: The Force Awakens toys, one spanning 18 hours and 12 countries leading up to the toys' availability for purchase on September 4th.
New Orleans is not unique in its vulnerability. Just about every coastal city, state, or region is sitting on a similar confluence of catastrophic conditions. The seas are rising, a storm is coming, and critical infrastructure is dangerously exposed.
Apple’s iOS 9 is coming soon, and one of the new features in the mobile operating system enhances privacy and security for users by blocking unencrypted traffic for apps. It’s called App Transport Security (ATS). Google’s response today was to explain to its developers how to circumvent it, so ads can load.
And locking this thread—this is not a suitable topic that needs to be discussed on Paizo.com. Please read the Community Guides, and if you have any further questions, please email community@paizo.com.
Crystal McDonald, founder of GoToInterview, accepts a $100,000 award at a business competition. (Photo: Crystal …
Houston native Crystal McDonald, 33, studied economics and finance at Dillard University, a historically African-American school in New Orleans, before moving to Chicago to work as a banker and earn her MBA at the University of Chicago. Love brought her back to New Orleans in 2012 (she married her college sweetheart) and rich business opportunities have kept her there. McDonald and her husband launched a startup, GoToInterview, a virtual job interview service, in 2013 after they struggled to find reliable part-time workers for the fast-food franchise they ran together. In a city where the majority of jobs are in high turnover industries like restaurants and tourism, they saw a need for a simple way for employers to vet job applicants without having to sift through paper applications or wait for viable candidates to work through their doors. They quickly found support from the city’s burgeoning startup network.
“Katrina was a blessing and a curse in the sense that post-Katrina [the city] has been really wonderful in attracting resources and everything you need to be successful in business,” McDonald says. “But it also stems from a sense of survival. It’s great to be part of that.”
Andrea Chen, 33, was one of thousands of New Orleans teachers who were abruptly fired during a sweeping overhaul of the city’s education system after Katrina. Jobless, Chen moved north, bouncing from couch to couch at friends’ places before eventually making her way back to New Orleans in 2006. The city was still very much in early recovery mode, and she noticed that community groups needed a space where they could organize their efforts. “We saw people painting street signs, gutting houses, this level of civic energy that was coming out of necessity,” Chen says. “It really galvanized everybody in the community to do their part.”
That was the seed for Propeller, a startup accelerator and incubator she founded in 2009. Today, the company’s 10,000-square-foot office space is homebase for 80 startups, roughly 80% of which are run by people in their 20s and 30s, Chen says. Propeller focuses on supporting businesses focused on solving four of New Orleans’ most pressing social and environmental concerns: healthcare, education equality, water management and food access. “Our goal is to have a critical mass of entrepreneurs working on an issue like [restoring our coastal wetlands],” Chen says. “That’s how we’re going to move the needle on the big challenges we’re facing.”
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Propeller, a startup incubator, was founded in New Orleans five years after Hurricane Katrina hit. (Photo: Pro …
New Orleans has done a fine job attracting new talent. The challenge facing city leaders who desperately need entrepreneurs to keep fueling growth is figuring out how to keep them there. Start a business in San Francisco and New York and it’s certainly possible to network your way into millions of dollars of locally-based venture capital funding. Business owners in New Orleans still rely very much on out-of-state funding. To answer that need, startup support services have become the lifeblood of the entrepreneurship movement. Incubators like Propeller and 4.0 Schools, which supports “ed-tech” startups, coach fledgling founders in fundraising, help connect them to VC firms and, of course, provide access to the office space they need. 504Ward, a group with 14,000 members, looks to attract and retain young, educated workers by hosting mixers and networking events. Another startup incubator and accelerator, Idea Village, has worked with more than 4,000 entrepreneurs over the last five years in New Orleans and hosts IdeaX, a 12-week accelerator program that connects New Orleans-based founders and global business experts.
McDonald herself is very much a product of this network. She operates out of a coworking space furnished by PowerMoves NOLA, an initiative founded by the New Orleans Startup Fund, a non-profit established by city business and community leaders. When GoToInterview was just getting started, she cycled through IdeaX to fine tune her business plan and CapitalX, another IdeaVillage program, to navigate her first round of fundraising. In May, she won a $100,000 investment at a business pitch competition held by AOL co-founder Steve Case. “Everybody has been involved [in our growth],” she says. “It’s electric.”
But the city will need more than mentorship programs to keep the talent they have attracted so far. Young people have a habit of growing older and wanting things like affordable housing, safe neighborhoods and good schools for their children. Gentrification of New Orleans neighborhoods may have made them more appealing to newcomers, but that also means rising housing costs. Rents have increased 9% since 2009, according to the National Association of Realtors, while income has dropped by 1.5%. Public schools are certainly much improved from pre-Katrina days — 88% of New Orleans students attended schools that met state standards in 2014, versus 30% pre-Katrina — but only 40% of students attend schools that have earned an “A” or “B” grade from the state’s education department, the Data Center found.
Likewise, today’s young startup owners will one day outgrow their co-working spaces and incubator roots. They’ll need to be able to attract pros from hubs like San Francisco and New York to help scale their businesses. Last year, Idea Village spearheaded a bi-coastal startup “roadshow”, sending a cadre of the city’s brightest startup stars to court investors and business elites in Silicon Valley and New York. They brought brass bands, hosted happy hours and festooned a conference room at Facebook with Saints flags and Jazz Fest posters. It was as much an effort to get people excited about the potential of the New Orleans startup scene as it was a recruitment bid. As great as it is to be home to a legion of startups, New Orleans has yet to launch the next Uber or Etsy, let alone the next Twitter — startups-turned-corporate-juggernauts that provide not only buzz but also thousands of jobs, something New Orleans so badly needs. Thanks to the oil bust of the 1980s, the city was bleeding jobs long before Katrina hit. The biggest employers in New Orleans in the last decade haven’t been hot new startups but rather hospitals, hotels, and retailers like Walmart and Costco.
Where city and state officials have made strides is in sweetening the deal for new businesses, mostly in the form of tax incentives. One program provides a 5% to 6% state payroll rebate for up to 10 years for companies that create at least five new jobs per year. Another program gives a 25% to 35% tax break to digital media production companies. The state also implemented a Tax Abatement Program that gives a five-year 100% property tax abatement to business owners who expand, restore or improve their structures in certain areas of the city.
“I’m not saying we’re going to wake up and be Silicon Valley tomorrow,” says Messer. “But we're going to get there.”
The many-fanged Fizzgig from the Jim Henson and Frank Oz film "The Dark Crystal" is up for auction, along with a heap of other science fiction and fantasy treasures including Leonard Nimoy's Spock uniform from "Star Trek" and the forever quoted "Multi Pass" of "The Fifth Element" fame.
Caption Hugh Jackman's Wolverine Claws
Prop Store
Hugh Jackman's Wolverine claws from "X2." Estimated auction price: $6,000-$9,000.
Hugh Jackman's Wolverine claws from "X2." Estimated auction price: $6,000-$9,000.
Prop Store is auctioning off some truly beloved sci-fi treasures including (but not limited to) a Dalek from "Doctor Who," Wolverine's claws (Hugh Jackman's forearms not attached) and Christopher Reeve's "underwater Superman tunic."
Just imagine the insufferable bragging rights you would possess showing up to a party in Malcolm McDowell's fancy purple coat from "A Clockwork Orange."
But truly the star of this whole show is Fizzgig. When contacted, via email, to find out if this truly was the authentic, angry fur monster from "Dark Crystal," Brandon Allinger, chief operating officer of Prop Store, said that though there were probably several Fizzgig puppets created for the film production, this is the only one he knows of that exists in private hands.
Curating of the auction is taking place in London and Los Angeles, and the sale itself is set for Sept. 23 at the BFI IMAX in London. Call-in and online bidding is allowed. For more information, head to the Prop Store.
We've collected a few choice items in the above gallery, along with the Prop Store's estimated auciton prices for the goods. Fizzgig's estimated price is set at $12,000-$15,000. So, Gelflings of the world, it's probably time to start pinching pennies.
In the job market, you have to make a big impression. This guy did just that by making a giant 3D printed resume to apply for a position.
Super Opinionated.
