When Bayard Winthrop founded American Giant, he set up manufacturing in San Francisco. The sweatshirt company focuses on the details and skips over the distributors. Winthrop tells host Guy Raz how making the clothing in America actually helps his bottom line.
In one of the greatest movies of all time, a World War I-era Englishman and his Arab guide stop at a well in the desert. But as they drink, they hear a warning shot, look into the distance, and see a lone figure in black, galloping toward them on a camel. The Arab man recognizes him and draws a gun. The lone figure brings him down with a single musket shot — now that's an entrance. The men in the scene were of course Omar Sharif as Sherif Ali and Peter O' Toole as the title character in Lawrence of Arabia.
The David Lean film hit screens 50 years ago this month, and a new, boxed Blu-ray edition, complete with a book that's big enough to be a holiday cheese tray, is out this season.
Lawrence of Arabia confirmed Lean as one of the great directors, and starred a whole company of British actors, including Alec Guiness as King Faisal and Jack Hawkins as a haughty British officer. It also introduced O' Toole and Sharif to world audiences. The actor joins NPR's Scott Simon to talk about his first hit film
Interview Highlights
On what made David Lean such a good director
"He was a brilliant person. He didn't think of anything except films. He did not think of theater. He did not think of anything else in his life. He didn't like actors; he hated actors, but he loved me. I don't know why, because I didn't know myself what I was going to do, and the first shot I had to make, I spent the whole night to practice it for the next day — my first shot in the film. And he knew about this, and he loved me for it."
Stuart Wilson/Getty Images
Omar Sharif received an Academy Award nomination for Best Supporting Actor for his role in Lawrence of Arabia.
Voting for a new president and parliament in Ghana has been extended into a second day, because of glitches with the new electronic voter verification system.
Ghana has gained an enviable reputation, in its often turbulent West African neighborhood, as being something of an oasis of stability – despite tensions in the build-up to the vote.
The unofficial 2012 election campaign theme in Ghana was peace. Musicians from the local labor union composed special songs and the politicians seeking election or re-election publicly committed to peace.
"Ghana has been peaceful anytime we have elections, but violence has cropped up," says Bice Osei Koffour, who heads Ghana's musicians' union. "So, you need to work on it constantly; keep reminding people about the need for peace, the need for tolerance."
Ghana has had five elections, and two peaceful transfers of power, under its belt since the end of military rule in 1992. President Obama has praised Ghana as a "model of democracy" in Africa because, despite heightened tension, it stepped back from the brink in a very close presidential race in 2008.
Enlarge Gabriela Barnuevo/AP
Lines were long at many polling stations in Ghana. Here a woman votes in the capital Accra.
It wouldn't be the worst thing that could happen to the country.
If President Obama and Congress can't come to agreement on new tax and spending policies by the end of year, the U.S. could slip into recession, defense and domestic programs will see damaging cuts, and the American people may become convinced that Washington can't govern the nation.
On the other hand, the lack of a deal would do a lot to help erase the federal deficit.
Getty Creative Images
If President Obama and Congress fail to reach a deal on tax and spending changes, the nation would feel a lot of fiscal pain. But it also may benefit from the long-term fiscal restraint that would come from keeping tax hikes and spending cuts in place.
Ever wonder why you have to turn off your e-reader or tablet before a plane takes off and lands? The Hill newspaper obtained a letter written by the head of the Federal Communications Commission to the Federal Aviation Administration. Julius Genachowski has asked for the FAA to loosen the rules on those devices.
Melissa Block speaks with our regular political commentators, E.J. Dionne of The Washington Post and Brookings Institution and David Brooks of The New York Times. They discuss the approaching fiscal cliff and the resignation of Republican Senator Jim DeMint.
The 2012 presidential election broke the $2 billion milestone in its final weeks, becoming the most expensive in American political history, according to final federal finance reports released Thursday. The reports detailed a last-minute cascade of money from mega-donors and an onslaught of spending by the Obama and Romney campaigns and "super" political action committees.
The final campaign finance tallies filed with the Federal Election Commission included nearly $86 million in fundraising for the losing presidential candidate, Republican Mitt Romney, in the election's last weeks. That final burst brought the Romney campaign's total for the election to above $1 billion. Final fundraising and spending totals for President Barack Obama's victorious drive also topped $1 billion.
Surpassing the $2 billion mark was long expected after an election season dominated by the supercharged competitive pressures that both campaigns faced in mounting massive fundraising blitzes to stoke expensive media ad battles and ground wars. The Obama and Romney campaigns each mobilized competing squads of ultra-wealthy fundraisers, sought aid from free-spending allied super PACs and deployed multimillion-dollar media broadsides and armies of organizers.
The final thrust of fundraising included a massive late surge of $33 million in donations to pro-Romney political committees from a single billionaire, Las Vegas casino owner Sheldon Adelson. In all, Adelson and his wife, Miriam, gave Romney and other Republican candidates $95 million during the election season, closing in on the gambling magnate's vow to give $100 million to GOP causes.
The new campaign finance filings covered the final few weeks of the race, when campaign organizations for Romney and Obama, along with a slew of super PACs, raised and spent millions toward the long-expected $2 billion milestone.
Despite Romney's bitter election loss, his national finance chairman on Thursday declared a fundraising victory. Spencer Zwick said "every dollar we raised was put to use in the effort to elect Mitt Romney" and described the totals as "the most successful in Republican Party history."
Both campaigns already were nearing $1 billion each in expenditures by late October, and super PACs supporting Obama and Romney had spent more than $500 million in media ads. Politically oriented nonprofit "social welfare" organizations that do not have to declare their finances or identify their fundraisers have spent hundreds of millions more on so-called issue ads.
The main pro-Romney super PAC, Restore Our Future, brought in $22 million in the campaign's final weeks, finishing with $152 million for the entire campaign. Adelson and his wife provided $10 million of that last-minute total — as well as $23 million to American Crossroads, another pro-Romney super PAC headed by veteran GOP strategist Karl Rove. Other top late donors to Restore included Larry Ellison, head of software giant Oracle Corp., who gave $3 million, and Houston Texans owner Robert McNair, who gave $1 million. The Renco Group, a New York company headed by investor Ira Rennert, also gave $1 million.
The rival super PAC supporting Obama, Priorities USA Action, reported raising $15 million during the last weeks of the campaign. The group was run by a group of former White House aides. The committee's final haul accounted for about 20 percent of roughly $78 million in contributions this election cycle.
The group's top donors included Renaissance Technologies investors James H. Simons and Henry Laufer, who each gave $1.5 million. Chicago media mogul Fred Eychaner, Texas lawyer Steve Mostyn, and Stephen Robert, also of Renaissance, also gave $1 million, as did the Laborer's International Union of North America.
But Adelson was the election's single most influential donor, vowing he would give more than $100 million to GOP candidates by the election. His postelection super PAC total does not quite match that figure, but the casino magnate also hinted broadly he would also give millions more to GOP-leaning nonprofits that do not have to report their war chests to the FEC but instead provide confidential figures to the Internal Revenue Service.
Along with his dominant presence in the presidential race, Adelson also poured money into super PACs backing several GOP Senate candidates in the final weeks of the election. More than $1.5 million in Adelson money went to a super PAC backing GOP candidate George Allen in Virginia, $1 million to a committee aiding Michigan candidate Peter Hoekstra and $500,000 to a super PAC supporting Sen. Scott Brown. All were defeated.
Adelson recently told The Wall Street Journal that he would double his $100 million investment in GOP causes by the next election and he has the financial muscle to do it. His massive campaign donations are backed by his lucrative casino holdings in the U.S. and Macau. The most recent November quarterly statement of his Las Vegas Sands Corp. estimated that Adelson's casino revenues surged $1.11 billion in the first nine months of 2012 compared with the same period in 2011.
In late November, Adelson's company announced a special dividend of $2.75 a share in anticipation of the threatened "fiscal cliff" rise in federal tax rates. The dividend move netted Adelson — who owns more than half of Sands' 820 million shares — an estimated personal gain of as much as $1.2 billion, according to financial analysts.
Adelson's role as the premiere fundraiser in American politics could be complicated by his casino company's continuing struggles with the federal government over tax revenues and Justice Department and Securities and Exchange Commission investigations focusing on possible violations of the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act, which targets money-laundering and international bribery.
Sands' recent quarterly statement acknowledged the federal probes as well as negotiations with the IRS over "unrecognized tax benefits" highlighted by a tax audit of the company's Macao and Singapore casino earnings between 2005 and 2009.
Sands cited a "possible settlement of matters presently under consideration at appeals in connection with the IRS audit."
In stories by four noted authors, this year's edition of Hanukkah Lights showcases some of the program's most touching and insightful moments: Two teenagers find the formula to bridge a bitter family divide; the life of a cynical young reporter is changed by a single mysterious encounter; a reluctant grade-school student stands up for his heritage, and is wounded in the line of duty; and a despairing mom reconnects with her distant yet devoted daughter. Susan Stamberg and Murray Horwitz bring these generation-spanning tales to life.
It wouldn't be the worst thing that could happen to the country.
If President Obama and Congress can't come to agreement on new tax and spending policies by the end of year, the U.S. could slip into recession, defense and domestic programs will see damaging cuts, and the American people may become convinced that Washington can't govern the nation.
On the other hand, the lack of a deal would do a lot to help erase the federal deficit.
Getty Creative Images
If President Obama and Congress fail to reach a deal on tax and spending changes, the nation would feel a lot of fiscal pain. But it also may benefit from the long-term fiscal restraint that would come from keeping tax hikes and spending cuts in place.
In Hyde Park on Hudson — a sly, modestly subversive dramedy about a crucial weekend meeting between England's King George VI and American President Franklin D. Roosevelt on the eve of World War II — the diffident young monarch (Samuel West) confides his frustration over his lifelong stutter while the two men enjoy a postprandial drink expressly forbidden by their womenfolk.
"That damn stutter, these useless legs," says the president (Bill Murray), going on to bestow fatherly advice about the need to project confidence. That counsel gives George a much-needed ego boost while clarifying why, in real life, Roosevelt was never seen in public using his wheelchair. Ever the canny politician, Roosevelt tells the younger man that "people don't want to see our flaws."
Times have changed, I guess, but this hugely entertaining movie is about the wisdom and — with trenchant wit and sympathy — the human flaws in one of America's most idealized heads of state.
Politically a lot was riding on that June 1939 weekend in the beautiful Hudson Valley retreat, to which the king and his prim bride, Elizabeth (Olivia Colman), had been sent to solicit American support in a war Britain couldn't hope to win alone. Sharply written by an American who lives in the area, Richard Nelson, and directed by Brit Roger Michell (Notting Hill, Persuasion), Hyde Park is about the birth of the two countries' special relationship — and at least one other, more intimate connection besides. The second one came to light when letters between the president and his fifth cousin, Daisy Suckley, were found under Daisy's bed after her death.
The weekend plays out through the eyes of Daisy, portrayed by Laura Linney as a timid virgin plucked from genteel post-Depression poverty to become the president's escape from the demands of his office — his confidante and more. To that degree, the movie is Daisy's take on their relationship, and the surprises it springs on an unworldly woman.
But the movie keeps peeling back like an onion to reveal more layers in Roosevelt's complicated domestic arrangements, observed with slightly wistful fascination by George and with horror by his very proper missus, whose idea of meeting Americans is waving at busy field hands.
Enlarge Nicola Dove/Focus Features
The film's story is told in large part from the perspective of Roosevelt's distant cousin Daisy (Laura Linney), with whom he carries on an affair.
Khaled Mashaal, the long-exiled leader of Hamas, made his first visit to the Gaza Strip on Friday.
Oil development in North Dakota and Montana has caused ridership to increase dramatically on the only Amtrak line running through those states. Nationally, the railroad company costs the federal government more than $400 million every year, so rail enthusiasts thought the oil boom might turn around the losing rail proposition in certain regions. But the Empire Builder Line is still not making money.
The Labor Department reported Friday that the nation's unemployment rate fell to 7.7 percent in November as employers added 146,000 jobs. In October, the jobless rate was 7.9 percent. Analysts had predicted weaker numbers for November, partly because of the storm's aftermath.
After resisting for some time, Starbucks has agreed to pay corporate taxes in Britain. It was revealed earlier that the coffee company has paid no such taxes in the past three years.
Banks have been under increasing pressure to cut costs and eliminate redundancies. The cuts will eliminate about 4 percent of Citi's workforce.
The popular website Intrade allows its users to bet on the odds of almost anything — like whether Syrian President Bashar al-Assad will get ousted by a certain date, or whether the movie Argo will win best picture at the Oscars.
This week, Ireland-based Intrade announced that U.S. users will have to unwind their bets and shut down their accounts by the end of the year. That's after the Commodity Futures Trading Commission sued Intrade for operating an unregistered exchange.
Transactions on the site have long resided in a gray area in the U.S., with little clarity as to whether they represent gambling, futures trading or something else that should not be regulated — leaving some questioning the legal basis for cracking down on so-called "prediction markets."
'More Accurate Than Pundits'
"Conceptually, to an economist, there's not a difference between betting and trading — apart from the fact that one sounds more polite than the other," says Justin Wolfers, who grew up in Australia working for bookies taking bets.
Now a University of Michigan professor who's studied Intrade, Wolfers says the site is not just a venue for winning and losing money. It also generates news as a byproduct, he says. That is, the odds on Intrade are almost always right.
"It tends to be more accurate than pundits, it tends to be more accurate than polls, and in the past it's even more accurate than very sophisticated poll-watchers like The New York Times' Nate Silver at FiveThirtyEight.com," Wolfers says.
To use Intrade, members place bets on yes-or-no questions. Much like a stock, the price of placing a bet fluctuates based on demand. And when the outcome is determined, the payout is either $10 or nothing. If you win, your profit is that $10, minus the price you paid to place your bet.
According to Thomas Bell, a professor at Chapman Law School in California, the CFTC considers those transactions enough like pork belly futures — which fall under the commission's authority — to be shut down.
It's All Politics
They Call The Election A Horse Race; It Has Real Bettors, Too
House Republicans and the White House are at a stalemate over how best to avoid the so-called fiscal cliff. As the deficit deadline approaches, the priority for Senate Budget Committee member Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI), is to protect the middle class.
Instead of closing in on a deal, the NHL and the players' association are further apart than ever before.
Union executive director Donald Fehr began the first of his two news conferences Thursday night by proclaiming he believed the sides had agreements on such issues as actual dollars, and then returned moments later to reveal the NHL rejected everything his side offered.
Hot-button topics such as the "make-whole" provision on existing contracts not only weren't settled, but are no longer being offered by the league. Forget that owners were willing to pay up to $300 million to cover the costs, now Commissioner Gary Bettman is saying the entire concept is off the table — along with everything else the league proposed during the previous two days of talks.
"They knew there was a major gulf between us and yet they came down here and told you we were close," deputy commissioner Bill Daly said.
Fehr vehemently disputed that assessment and stuck to his opinion that the sides really aren't far apart, saying they are "clearly very close if not on top of one another."
When the NHL agreed to increase its make-whole offer of deferred payments from $211 million to $300 million it was part of a proposed package that required the union to agree on three nonnegotiable points. Instead, the players' association accepted the raise in funds, but then made counterproposals on the issues the league stated had no wiggle room.
That ended Thursday's delayed meeting after just an hour and sent the NHL negotiating team back to the league office.
"I am disappointed beyond belief," Bettman said. "We're going to take a deep breath and look back at where we are and what needs to be accomplished."
The sides won't meet again before Saturday at the earliest. While Bettman insisted that a drop-dead date for a deal that would preserve a season with "integrity" hasn't been established — even internally — clearly there isn't a lot of time to work out an agreement.
"I'm surprised," Pittsburgh Penguins star Sidney Crosby said. "We feel like we moved in their direction."
The 2004-05 season was lost completely before the players' association accepted a deal that included a salary cap for the first time. While no major philosophical issues such as that exist in these negotiations, the sides still don't appear to be ready to come to an agreement.
"It looks like this is not going to be resolved in the immediate future," Fehr said.
A 48-game season was played in 1995 after a lockout stretched into January. Bettman said he wouldn't have a season shorter than that.
As Donald Fehr was painting a positive picture, Daly was calling Fehr's brother, Steve — the union's special counsel — to say that the NHL was rejecting the players' counteroffer. Once the union was unwilling to accept the league's three main conditions, nothing else mattered.
"Not only is it unusual, I would be hard-pressed to think of anything comparable in my experience," Steve Fehr said about the instant rejection.
The NHL wants to limit personal player contracts to five years, seven for a club's own player, and has elevated the issue to the highest level of importance. The union countered with an offer of an eight-year maximum length with the variable in salary being no greater than a 25 percent difference between the highest-paid year of the deal and the lowest.
"It's the hill we will die on," said Daly, who added that the owners were "insulted" by the players' response to the owners' offer Wednesday night.
The other sticking points the NHL demanded of the players are a 10-year term on the new agreement, with a mutual opt-out option after eight years, and no compliance buy-outs or caps on escrow in the transition phase to the new structure. The union presented an offer of an eight-year deal with a reopener after six.
The NHL believes that the union merely wants to take the parts of the offer it wants and then try to negotiate on the other conditions that make those parts possible.
"The take or give or bottom line on all this is it appears that the union is suggesting because we made substantial movements in certain areas that we're close to a deal," Bettman said. "Those moves were contingent on the union specifically agreeing on other things, which while the union may have moved toward, didn't agree to."
Talks resumed Tuesday night with owners and players in the room, and Bettman and Donald Fehr on the outside. It sparked what seemed to be the most optimistic developments in the lockout that has lasted 82 days.
But the tenor began to change Wednesday, and discourse erupted on a wild Thursday night that featured three news conferences in the span of an unprecedented hour of chaos. The sides went from not wanting to say much of anything Wednesday to not being able to stop voicing their opinions Thursday.
When the players suggested Wednesday night that they wanted Donald Fehr to rejoin the negotiations Thursday, the NHL informed them that his inclusion could be a "deal-breaker."
"We thought we were getting close. There was definitely movement toward each other," Winnipeg Jets defenseman Ron Hainsey said. "As confident as some of us players are in the issues, we cannot close deals. I'd love to think I could, we cannot."
Donald and Steve Fehr were in Thursday's session, as were Daly and lead league counsel Bob Batterman. None of the six owners who attended the meetings Tuesday and Wednesday were present, though some players were.
Steve Fehr and a number of players stood in the back of the room with arms folded as Bettman and Daly stood at the podium to present the league's position.
There were already signs the process was breaking down earlier Thursday when the union requested that federal mediators rejoin the discussions. A similar request was turned down by the league earlier this week. Mediators previously were unsuccessful in creating a breakthrough after two days of discussions last week.
Without mediation, and the NHL's preference to keep Donald Fehr away from the table, the players became a bit miffed.
Negotiations resumed a little after 2 p.m. Wednesday and proceeded in fits and starts as the league and the players' association searched for an agreement. As they had the day before, talks went deep into the night, breaking two hours for dinner before finishing in the early morning hours.
One point of contention is the length of a new contract, with owners looking for a 10-year pact, and players wanting a shorter term. The league also is seeking to limit the length of individual player contracts to five years.
"What we got today, quite frankly and disappointingly, missed the mark on all three respects," Daly said. "So for the union to suggest somehow we are close, is cherry picking and it's unfortunate."
Some hope emerged Tuesday in the first round of talks that kept Bettman on the outside along with Fehr, while six owners and about 18 players talked inside. The positive feeling carried over into Wednesday morning when various team executives said they heard good reports during an NHL board of governors meeting.
There were no owners present for the final round of talks Thursday, but those who joined the process for the first time during the week expressed their disappointment following the breakdown in negotiations.
"Regrettably, we have been unable to close the divide on some critical issues that we feel are essential to the immediate and long-term health of our game," Winnipeg Jets chairman Mark Chipman said in a statement released by the NHL. "While I sense there are some members of the players association that understand our perspective on these issues, clearly there are many that don't."
The sides are trying to avoid another lost season. The NHL became the first North American professional sports league to cancel a full year because of a labor dispute back in 2005. The deal reached then was in place until this September, and the lockout was enacted on Sept. 16 after that agreement expired.
"While trust was built and progress was made along the way, unfortunately, our proposal was rejected by the Union's leadership," Toronto Maple Leafs minority owner Larry Tanenbaum said in a statement. "My love for the game is only superseded by my commitment to our fans, and I hold out hope we can soon join with our players and return the game back to its rightful place on the ice.
All games through Dec. 14, along with the New Year's Day Winter Classic and the All-Star game, have been wiped off the schedule. More cancellations could be coming within days.
"I am very disappointed and disillusioned," Tanenbaum said. "Had I not experienced this process myself, I might not have believed it."
The director Francois Truffaut once remarked that it takes as much time and energy to make a bad movie as to make a good one. He was right, but I would add one thing: It takes extraordinary effort to make a truly memorable flop.
The best example is Heaven's Gate, the hugely expensive 1980 movie by Michael Cimino that is the most famous cinematic disaster of my lifetime. It's part of that film's legend that it not only took down a studio, United Artists, but was the nail in the coffin of Hollywood's auteur filmmaking of the 1970s.
Yet Cimino's movie has had its champions over the years, especially in Europe, where many reckon it an unappreciated masterwork. So when Criterion released its ravishing new DVD and Blu-ray of the restored director's cut, which runs 3 1/2 hours, I was curious to see how Heaven's Gate looked 30 years on.
The movie is a revisionist Western that offers a bleak reading of American history. Raspy-voiced Kris Kristofferson — whose movie stardom now seems utterly baffling — stars as James Averill, a son of the ruling class whom we first see at his Harvard graduation in 1870.
An idealist, Averill heads out West to help civilize the country, becoming a lawman in Johnson County, Wyo. But by the 1890s, things are spinning out of control. Livestock barons have declared war on the county's Eastern European immigrants, whom they think of as thieves and rabble. Led by a well-heeled archvillain played by the normally noble Sam Waterston, they've put out a death list of 150 people, including the woman Averill loves, a brothel-running prostitute played by the fleshy young Isabelle Huppert.
With that conflict established, the movie slowly, slowly, slowly builds to the actual historical event known as the Johnson County War between mercenary killers and immigrants. And it must be said that this showdown actually feels more timely now — in this era of Occupy Wall Street and fierce battles over immigration — than it did at the very beginning of the Reagan era, when the film's gutbucket Marxism ran against the prevailing cultural mood.
Now, Heaven's Gate's failure isn't surprising, for it truly was a vainglorious folly in love with its own beauty and supposed profundity. Shots linger forever; the characters' behavior is often inexplicably silly. Yet at the same time, the movie's not nothing. Cimino has a great sense of space, a marvelous eye for landscape and a taste for epic storytelling. He was trying to make a masterpiece, and though he wound up with a critical and box-office drubbing, the failure to pull off a masterpiece is hardly the worst crime an artist can commit.
But it was treated as such. The reviling of Heaven's Gate became a key moment of the post-'70s cultural reversion in which film became less about personal expression and more about corporate entertainment. Cimino's film came out just as it was becoming routine for ordinary people to learn the weekend's box-office grosses and, often, the budgets of what they were watching. You began hearing filmgoers discuss whether Francis Ford Coppola spent too much money — his own money, mind you — on Apocalypse Now.
In such a context, Cimino's excesses on Heaven's Gate fed a simple, moralistic narrative about hubristic, out-of-control filmmakers who cared more about their "personal visions" than about entertaining the audience the way blockbusters like Star Wars and Raiders of the Lost Ark did. Naturally, Hollywood executives loved this storyline, which let them feel like the victims of villainous artists.
What was wrong with this idea is that the problem in Hollywood — now, then and always — is not artistic hubris but dollar-driven hackery. It's not ambitious failures like Cloud Atlas, but games turned into movies like Battleship. While Cimino's film is one of the top 10 all-time money-losers, it's behind such dreck as Cutthroat Island, Sahara, Mars Needs Moms and The Adventures of Pluto Nash.
If we forget about all these other flops, it's because at the deepest level they were made to be forgotten. Not so Heaven's Gate. Say what you will against it, you can tell that it's the work of one man — and that he wanted you to remember it forever.
As Syrian fighting intensifies in Syria, diplomatic efforts are also heating up.
U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, Russia's Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov and the main international envoy to Syria were all in Dublin, Ireland, for an international gathering Thursday. The meeting came as Syria's opposition tries to get better organized to offer a real alternative to President Bashar Assad's regime.
The U.N. and Arab League envoy, Lakhdar Brahimi, says there were no "sensational decisions" made at the talks in Dublin. But at least the U.S. and Russia are looking for, as he put it, creative solutions.
Before the talks, Clinton also struck a relatively positive tone.
"We have been trying hard to work with Russia to stop the bloodshed in Syria and start a political transition toward a post-Assad Syrian future. And we very much support what Lakhdar Brahimi is trying to do," she said.
The U.S. and Russia have both raised concerns about the status of Syria's chemical weapons stocks this week, and Clinton says both realize how quickly things are changing on the ground.
"Events on the ground in Syria are accelerating and we see that in many different ways the pressure against the regime in and around Damascus seems to be increasing," she said.
Up to now, Russia has used its position on the U.N. Security Council to shield Assad's regime. But a French diplomat says the Russian position has been evolving in recent months. The official, who asked not to be named, says the Russians understand that Assad can't win this.
That's also the assessment of Murhaf Jouejati, a Syrian exile who teaches at the National Defense University in Washington, D.C.
"So it does look like the Assad regime is going to be over soon, it's going to collapse ... fairly soon," Jouejati says. "If that is the case, if my assumption is right, that would at least in part explain a more moderate Russian position on Syria."
But Russia does have many concerns, says one expert, Yevgeny Satanovsky, who runs the Moscow Institute for Middle Eastern Studies in Moscow.
"We don't support Basher al-Assad — he's normal for this region — [a] dictator," Satanovsky says. "But the understanding that radical Islamism is not better than authoritarian leaders is, in Russia, absolutely clear."
The U.S. argues that radical Islamists make up only a small percentage of the rebel fighters in Syria, though the numbers are increasing as the conflict drags on.
The State Department is expected to announce soon that it will put one militant group, Jabhat al-Nusra, on a terrorism blacklist — a signal to secular opposition figures to keep their distance.
At the same time, the U.S. is planning to give a boost to opposition figures it prefers by recognizing the newly formed opposition coalition, the Syrian National Coalition. That's according to Jouejati of the National Defense University.
"The coalition is in the midst of putting together a transitional government, it has been recognized by several foreign governments and I think Washington is pleased with what it is seeing," he says says. "And I think fairly soon the Syrian National Coalition is going to be recognized by the United States as 'the legitimate representative of the Syrian people.'"
Jouejati expects that to happen next week in Morocco, at the so-called Friends of Syria meeting. France is already funneling aid to the opposition coalition and the rebels hope that the U.S. and others will do that as well to show that there is an alternative to the Assad government.
There's nothing particularly special about Edward Burns' wry family drama The Fitzgerald Family Christmas –— but that makes it something of a relief amid the avalanche of overlong, big-ticket prestige films that comes tumbling into theaters this time of year.
You've probably seen some version of this story before: A crotchety and unreliable old man, long estranged from most of his family, attempts desperately to reconnect with them on Christmas Day. It's urgent, because he's harboring a Secret with a capital S.
But the familiar plot framework is really just an excuse for Burns to grapple with the complicated, often acrimonious family dynamics among his characters. Particularly for those who come from large, sprawling families, plenty of it is likely to ring true.
Burns himself plays Gerry, one of seven kids in the Irish Catholic working-class Fitzgerald family, and the only one who has never left home. He runs the family business, a well-kept pub with a glossy bar, and serves as the family organizer and peacemaker, which is a harder job than it may sound.
His crisis du jour? He's been contacted by his father (Ed Lauter), who skipped out on the family some 20 years earlier, leaving his wife (Anita Gillette) with those seven children, the youngest of them still in diapers. Dad really wants to be allowed to attend the family's upcoming Christmas gathering; Mom wants nothing to do with Dad, for understandable reasons.
It's left to Gerry to apply salve to all the unhealed wounds, not just between his parents but also among his numerous siblings. The Fitzgeralds all seem to love each other well enough, but they can tolerate being in the same room with one another only in various permutations.
One of the youngest (Kerry Bishe) doesn't really have anything against one of her much older brothers (Michael McGlone); she simply feels he doesn't know her, thanks in part to their age difference, and at one point she challenges him to name the high school she attended. (He gets it wrong.)
Tribeca Films
Fitzgerald family patriarch Big Jim (Ed Lauter) comes home for the holiday, hoping for forgiveness from the family he abandoned years before.
In Hyde Park on Hudson — a sly, modestly subversive dramedy about a crucial weekend meeting between England's King George VI and American President Franklin D. Roosevelt on the eve of World War II — the diffident young monarch (Samuel West) confides his frustration over his lifelong stutter while the two men enjoy a postprandial drink expressly forbidden by their womenfolk.
"That damn stutter, these useless legs," says the president (Bill Murray), going on to bestow fatherly advice about the need to project confidence. That counsel gives George a much-needed ego boost while clarifying why, in real life, Roosevelt was never seen in public using his wheelchair. Ever the canny politician, Roosevelt tells the younger man that "people don't want to see our flaws."
Times have changed, I guess, but this hugely entertaining movie is about the wisdom and — with trenchant wit and sympathy — the human flaws in one of America's most idealized heads of state.
Politically a lot was riding on that June 1939 weekend in the beautiful Hudson Valley retreat, to which the king and his prim bride, Elizabeth (Olivia Colman), had been sent to solicit American support in a war Britain couldn't hope to win alone. Sharply written by an American who lives in the area, Richard Nelson, and directed by Brit Roger Michell (Notting Hill, Persuasion), Hyde Park is about the birth of the two countries' special relationship — and at least one other, more intimate connection besides. The second one came to light when letters between the president and his fifth cousin, Daisy Suckley, were found under Daisy's bed after her death.
The weekend plays out through the eyes of Daisy, portrayed by Laura Linney as a timid virgin plucked from genteel post-Depression poverty to become the president's escape from the demands of his office — his confidante and more. To that degree, the movie is Daisy's take on their relationship, and the surprises it springs on an unworldly woman.
But the movie keeps peeling back like an onion to reveal more layers in Roosevelt's complicated domestic arrangements, observed with slightly wistful fascination by George and with horror by his very proper missus, whose idea of meeting Americans is waving at busy field hands.
Enlarge Nicola Dove/Focus Features
The film's story is told in large part from the perspective of Roosevelt's distant cousin Daisy (Laura Linney), with whom he carries on an affair.
As President Obama and Capitol Hill lawmakers assess the need for spending cuts and tax increases against the risk of triggering a new recession, they might look across the Atlantic for insights from those who have already grappled with those budgetary questions.
The problem of excessive government debt has swamped economies across Europe and forced countries to take severe measures to cut their deficits. The first lesson from their "fiscal consolidation" experiences: It will hurt.
"Fiscal consolidation, which has happened in Europe much more actually than in the U.S. so far, has had a major impact on growth," says Olivier Blanchard, director of research at the International Monetary Fund. "If you look country by country, you'll find that the countries which have strongest fiscal consolidation actually have less growth."
IMF economists now foresee economic activity in the eurozone area as a whole shrinking by 0.4 percent in 2012, with Greece, Spain, Italy and Portugal suffering especially sharp declines in output. Those are also the countries that have pursued the most aggressive deficit reduction programs.
Different Kinds Of Deficit Reductions
As President Obama and Capitol Hill lawmakers assess the need for spending cuts and tax increases against the risk of triggering a new recession, they might look across the Atlantic for insights from those who have already grappled with those budgetary questions.
The problem of excessive government debt has swamped economies across Europe and forced countries to take severe measures to cut their deficits. The first lesson from their "fiscal consolidation" experiences: It will hurt.
"Fiscal consolidation, which has happened in Europe much more actually than in the U.S. so far, has had a major impact on growth," says Olivier Blanchard, director of research at the International Monetary Fund. "If you look country by country, you'll find that the countries which have strongest fiscal consolidation actually have less growth."
IMF economists now foresee economic activity in the eurozone area as a whole shrinking by 0.4 percent in 2012, with Greece, Spain, Italy and Portugal suffering especially sharp declines in output. Those are also the countries that have pursued the most aggressive deficit reduction programs.
Different Kinds Of Deficit Reductions
Sometimes, you don't have to go far to find a story. For the past few months, just stepping outside NPR's Kabul office has been a drama.
The neighborhood is in the midst of a major road and sewer renovation project. It's just one of many such projects that is badly needed in Kabul and elsewhere in the country.
But as is often the case, the pace and quality of the work has been uneven. And residents aren't so sure whether the final product will be worth the months of gridlock, power outages and business interruption.
Enlarge Sean Carberry/NPR
One of the streets undergoing renovation in Kabul. Residents often have to build makeshift bridges at their own expense to span the sewage trenches and reach their garages or driveways.
About 2 million Americans could lose unemployment checks if Congress doesn't extend emergency federal benefits by the end of the year. Host Michel Martin talks about new research challenging conventional wisdom about unemployment checks. Guests include James Sherk of the Heritage Foundation and Judy Conti of the National Employment Law Project.
A student occupation at Cooper Union is entering its third day. The New York school of art, architecture and engineering is famous for not charging tuition to undergraduates. Administrators say the school is facing a financial crisis and needs to find new revenue sources.
President Obama has another four years to pursue his goals. Now, some of the groups who elected him are asking what's in it for them. Host Michel Martin discusses whether the president should pursue a 'black agenda' with The Root's Keli Goff and former Cincinnati Mayor Kenneth Blackwell.
The NHL owners and players met Tuesday to try to restart labor talks and save what's left of the hockey season. NPR's Tom Goldman reports on the negotiations and fallout from the prolonged lockout.
A tentative agreement has been reached to end an eight-day strike that crippled the nation's largest port complex. Shippers were prevented from delivering billions of dollars in cargo to warehouses and distribution centers across the country.
Retailers are finding more ways to offer their customers financial products — mortgages, loans and the like. In the past, people looked to banks for this kind of product. But big-box stores are trying to find new ways of getting money to those who cannot use banks, or want to avoid them altogether.
Costco may be best known for pallets of bottled water or bulk toilet paper that can last a family an entire year. But earlier this year, it also added mortgages to its growing array of financial offerings.
Costco is not actually making the loans. Rather, it refers customers to its partner banks, with whom it has negotiated discounts on closing costs and interest rates.
Jay Smith, the director of business and financial services for Costco, says offering mortgages helps boost Costco's No. 1 profit center: annual membership fees.
"This is a great way to increase that value for membership," he says, "and that's why we're offering" loans.
Costco, which also offers auto and home insurance, is just one of the latest entrants in the alternative consumer finance market, an area some refer to as "shadow banking."
For some retailers, like Home Depot, branded credit cards and loan offerings are old hat. The home improvement chain established its credit and loan offerings almost at its inception. That's because it sells lots of big-ticket items, especially after disasters like Hurricane Sandy, when there is sudden demand for new credit.
Home Depot's vice president of financial services, Dwaine Kimmet, says the company recently sweetened its offers in part because other sources of credit have dried up.
"And customers just can't get access to capital, because there's just not equity in their homes, in many cases," he says.
Offering credit in a store also helps sales, of course. Wal-Mart, the world's largest retailer, partners with other companies to offer checking accounts, check-cashing, money orders and a host of other services.
Alternative financial products appeal to a growing number of people, says Wal-Mart Vice President Daniel Eckert.
"I think there's also a group of the population that engages in these services, frankly because their needs are not being met by 'mainstream financial services,' and are unhappy about the value proposition or the costs," he says, adding that those customers "have found that this is a better way for them to manage and control their finances, and is more accessible to them."
In fact, in a recent report, the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp., which regulates banks, said a growing number of Americans are going outside the mainstream banking system to manage their money. More than 8 percent of U.S. households avoid traditional banks altogether.
Norma Garcia, a senior attorney for Consumers Union, says the fact that retailers see an opportunity in financial service products is a sign of the times.
"And it really should be a wake-up call for the banks that they are losing customers," she says. "And that they need to be more responsive to the needs of consumers."
Garcia notes the backlash against banks over increased overdraft fees and other charges. She says that although mortgages offered through Costco and checking accounts through Wal-Mart may offer some lower initial fees, Consumers Union is still studying the products to see whether they also come with notable drawbacks.
"What we have seen is that the protections vary considerably," she says. "It's not always apparent to the consumers what the risks might be with that product. In some cases there are activation fees, [or] there are dormancy fees if you don't use the product for a certain period of time."
Just because they might appear at the checkout aisle, she says, mortgages and loans are not — and should not be — impulse buys.
Negotiators reached an agreement late Tuesday to end an eight-day strike that crippled the nation's largest port complex and prevented shippers from delivering billions of dollars in cargo to warehouses and distribution centers across the country, Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa said.
Villaraigosa emerged from the talks to make the announcement just a few hours after he had escorted in the federal mediators who had just arrived from Washington.
"The negotiating team has voted to approve a contract that they'll take to their members," Villaraigosa said, flanked by smiling negotiators, union members and the two mediators.
The deal came after days of negotiations that included all-night bargaining sessions suddenly went from a stalemate to big leaps of progress. Villaraigosa said the sides were already prepared to take a vote when the mediators arrived.
The strike began Nov. 27 when about 400 members of the International Longshore and Warehouse Union's local clerical workers unit walked off their jobs. The clerks had been working without a contract for more than two years.
The walkout quickly closed 10 of the ports' 14 terminals when some 10,000 dockworkers, members of the clerks' sister union, refused to cross picket lines.
At issue during the lengthy negotiations was the union's contention that terminal operators wanted to outsource future clerical jobs out of state and overseas — an allegation the shippers denied.
Shippers said they wanted the flexibility not to fill jobs that were no longer needed as clerks quit or retired. They said they promised the current clerks lifetime employment.
During the strike, both sides said salaries, vacation, pensions and other benefits were not a major issue.
The clerks, who make an average base salary of $87,000 a year, have some of the best-paying blue-collar jobs in the nation. When vacation, pension and other benefits are factored in, the employers said, their annual compensation package reached $165,000 a year.
"We know we're blessed," one of the strikers, Trinnie Thompson, said during the walkout. "We're very thankful for our jobs. We just want to keep them."
Union leaders said if future jobs were not kept at the ports the result would be another section of the U.S. economy taking a serious economic hit so that huge corporations could increase their profit margins by exploiting people in other states and countries who would be forced to work for less.
Combined, the Los Angeles and Long Beach ports handle about 44 percent of all cargo that arrives in the U.S. by sea. About $1 billion a day in merchandise, including cars from Japan and computers from China, flow past its docks.
Shuttering 10 of the ports' 14 terminals kept about $760 million a day in cargo from being delivered, according to port officials. The cargo stacked up on the docks and in adjacent rail yards or, in many cases, remained on arriving ships. Some of those ships were diverted to other ports along the West Coast.
The clerks handle such tasks as filing invoices and billing notices, arranging dock visits by customs inspectors, and ensuring that cargo moves off the dock quickly and gets where it's supposed to go.
The $1 billion a day in cargo that moves through the busy port terminals is loaded on trucks and trains that take it to warehouses and distribution centers across the country.
Sometimes, you don't have to go far to find a story. For the past few months, just stepping outside NPR's Kabul office has been a drama.
The neighborhood is in the midst of a major road and sewer renovation project. It's just one of many such projects that is badly needed in Kabul and elsewhere in the country.
But as is often the case, the pace and quality of the work has been uneven. And residents aren't so sure whether the final product will be worth the months of gridlock, power outages and business interruption.
Enlarge Sean Carberry/NPR
One of the streets undergoing renovation in Kabul. Residents often have to build makeshift bridges at their own expense to span the sewage trenches and reach their garages or driveways.
George Mason University professor Mark Katz is an expert on Russia's role in the Middle East. Russia is the Syrian government's main arms supplier. Professor Katz talks to David Greene about whether Russia's support for Damascus is flagging as the Syrian military continues to battle opposition rebels.
The Persian Gulf kingdom of Bahrain has jailed opposition leaders and recently banned all demonstrations. But the protests continue, particularly in the smaller villages outside the capital, Manama. Independent producer Reese Erlich recently visited one such village.
There may be a new credit bubble swelling, four years after the big one burst. Bloomberg Businessweek contributor Roben Farzad says the lack of reasonably priced credit for small businesses could set up another financial disaster. He speaks with host Michel Martin.
After the United Nations voted overwhelmingly to recognize the Palestinians as a non-member state, Israel announced it would expand settlements in the West Bank and East Jerusalem. If completed, the project would effectively divide the West Bank in two, and mark the final blow to the two-state solution.
There may be a new credit bubble swelling, four years after the big one burst. Bloomberg Businessweek contributor Roben Farzad says the lack of reasonably priced credit for small businesses could set up another financial disaster. He speaks with host Michel Martin.
Renee Montagne talks to NPR's Tamara Keith, who guides us through the latest state of play on the looming deadline for automatic tax increases and spending cuts known as the "fiscal cliff."
Are the days of "daily deal" coupons about to expire? Shares of email coupon company Groupon are down nearly 80 percent since going public last year. And its smaller rival, Living Social, plans to lay off as many as 400 employees, after reporting a net loss of more than $560 million in the third quarter.
Those struggles have raised questions about the future of the daily deal strategy, and whether a company like Groupon can stay in business.
"It's ... an evolution of the company that's happening," says Arvind Bhatia, managing director of equity research for the investment firm Sterne Agee, in an interview with NPR's David Greene. "They have a decent balance sheet," Bhatia says of Groupon. "As long as they continue to generate profitability, I think the business can survive."
Interview Highlights:
On the coupon business model
"I think fundamentally, the model can work. But it needs scale. Keep in mind that Groupon was born out of the recession ... at a time when people wanted to see deals. So they were right in the sweet spot of what people really wanted. And they've grown really fast.
"But ... the daily deal business seems to be peaking. And in some ways, Groupon is a victim of its own success. It's hard for them to continue to grow the daily deal business the way they did before."
On the need for scale
"Both Living Social and Groupon — Groupon, in particular — have spent tons and tons of money in acquiring these customers. They have something like 160 million people whose email list that they have. That is what is attractive to merchants. So, you need scale to succeed."
On complaints about deals
"The deals that merchants offer are deeply discounted deals. And those are meant to be deals that bring customers in. And hopefully, customers like the product and keep coming back.
"Sometimes what happens is, the merchants that are using this product maybe don't know how to use it appropriately. And maybe their service isn't good enough — and they were hoping this would be this one last desperate move to get customers in before they go out of business. So, it depends on the merchant itself."
On the evolving "daily deal" business
"In the beginning, it was all about, let's acquire customers at all costs. Now, particularly for Groupon, it's OK, you've got the customers. Now show us how you can make money with this business model.
"So one thing they have to do is slow down on their spending. And they're doing exactly that."
On moving past email
"What they've talked about is tapping into, perhaps, search engines like Google and Bing to attract more customers. And that's a pretty significant move. Keep in mind that 25 percent of all searches ... are for local products.
"But right now, they're driving very little business from these search engines. So that's an opportunity for them to now go after customers that are looking for deals in general, not just through the emails."
One of the nation's largest art fairs, Art Basel, opens this week in Miami. But days before the fair launches in Miami Beach, the party had already started across the bridge, in Miami's Wynwood neighborhood.
At a trendy lounge and art gallery, a couple of hundred people are watching artists at work. The event, sponsored by Heineken, features six street artists putting their own spin on the beer maker's logo. Heineken also commissioned the artists to paint a series of murals on buildings in Wynwood, a neighborhood now famous for its street art. In fact, street art has become so common that some artists say finding good wall space can be difficult.
"For Basel, I started looking for my walls as early as last February," says Trek 6, who prefers to be called a writer — as in writing graffiti — rather than a street artist. (Though he doesn't like the term "graffiti" either.)
Trek 6 started putting his art on walls in Wynwood back when it was a rough neighborhood of warehouses and shoe factories. Over just a few short years, and with help from Art Basel, it has become the center of Miami's art scene, known for its many galleries, studios and street murals.
"I saw this get transformed from a place where you don't want to ever get caught ... to a place where now everybody at all hours of the night with family and everything are out here looking at murals, going into alleys, looking for artwork," he says.
Tony Goldman's Wynwood
For those who come to Wynwood for art, the first stop is often a grassy courtyard with walkways, tables and a restaurant surrounded by 40 large, colorful, arresting murals. It's called Wynwood Walls, a public art space created by developer Tony Goldman, who died earlier this year.
Enlarge Greg Allen/NPR
Tony Goldman's son, Joey (far left), and daughter, Jessica (center), pose with artist Shepard Fairey and their mother, Janet Goldman.
Negotiations between the White House and Republican leaders have reached a stalemate over how best to avoid going off the so-called fiscal cliff. Robert Kuttner, founder and co-director of the American Prospect, argues that the president should hold his ground in this debate, even if it means triggering the tax hikes and spending cuts.
In Istanbul, major public transit projects are back under way after years of paralysis. The problem wasn't a lack of financing, but the layer upon layer of ancient artifacts that turned up every time the earthmovers started their work.
The excavation began eight years ago on projects intended to ease Istanbul's notoriously clogged traffic.
The job included building a tunnel under the Bosphorus Strait and linking it to a rail and subway network. When the dig was stopped several years ago, eyes rolled and shoulders shrugged.
Enlarge Mustafa Ozer/AFP/Getty Images
Archaeologists in Istanbul work on the remnants of a Byzantine-era ship in June 2006.
Representatives from more than 190 countries are convening in Dubai to discuss the treaty regulating global telecommunications. It hasn't been updated since 1988, when the Internet was in its infancy. There is fear that countries known to censor or restrict Internet access will push for global governance that could hamper speech and innovation. Renee Montagne discusses the issues with Ambassador Philip Verveer, who coordinates U.S. policy on global communications.
On Dec. 1, Kazakhstan celebrated a new holiday: "First President's Day." The central Asian country feted its long-time leader, Nursultan Nazarbayev, though outside observers have criticized what appears to be a growing cult of personality around the president in the oil-rich country.
Germans are famous for their efficiency and being on time. But a much-delayed, expensive new airport in the German capital, Berlin, is rapidly destroying that reputation.
Located in the former East Berlin neighborhood of Schoenefeld, the new airport is to replace three others that serviced passengers in the once-divided city. One of those, Tempelhof — made famous by the Allied airlifts of food and supplies during the Soviet blockade of the late 1940s — is already closed.
At the moment, the airport named for late German chancellor and Nobel laureate Willy Brandt is scheduled to open in October 2013. Few here believe the new date will stand, however, given the scrapping of three prior opening dates because of construction delays, cost overruns and safety concerns.
Enlarge Odd Anderson/AFP/Getty Images
A carpenter works in the unfinished departure hall of the airport on Sept. 11.