Odd friends, Bush and Lula foster ties

BRASILIA (Reuters) - Brazil’s President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva and President Bush come from opposite ends of the political spectrum but good personal rapport and mutual interests are helping to warm ties between the Western Hemisphere’s two largest nations.

The author, in the opening paragraph, refers to the United States and Brazil as being the two largest nations in the Western Hemisphere. However, unless I am mistaken, Canada and the United States are the two largest nations in the Western Hemisphere.

O.M.

We corrected: GBU Editor

War photographers will often tell you that it’s the children that get to them, because children are so resilient and despite living in a violent world, children everywhere demonstrate the same innocent characteristics. That is one of the reasons why I admire this photograph taken in Iraq by Reuters photographer Carlos Barria. But is it just me that sees something special about it? To answer my own question, the photographer must have seen it too, so that makes two of us!

Earlier this year, Carlos was embedded with the US military in Iraq and was three blocks away when a deadly car bomb exploded in a Baghdad market, having passed the location a short time previously. He was shaken but quickly returned to photograph the aftermath, with fires still burning and people shouting and carrying away the wounded. It was in the middle of the mayhem that he ‘saw’ this quiet image.

Why do I like this picture so much? Because of the expression on the boy’s face. It is the “1,000 yard stare”, an expression coined to describe battle fatigued soldiers, and epitomised by Don McCullin’s picture, ‘Portrait of marine during the Battle of Hue, 1968’. But to see it on the face of a young boy is shocking. It contrasts with the football he is holding, itself representing childhood innocence. The ball also suggests that whatever the circumstances, anywhere in the world, boys will always find time for a game of soccer. Yet the expression on this boy’s face marks him out from contemporaries elsewhere because he is clearly traumatized by events. His body language also contrasts to the adults behind him. He is awestruck by the sight of the US troops, the adults are just going about their daily business oblivious to what to them has become routine.

Images of violence end up in print because they so eloquently illustrate the day’s news. But in any war zone like Iraq there are many violent images and with such frequency that after a while all but the truly remarkable blur together in the memory. This image of a boy may have been neglected by picture editors on the day in favour of the action pictures, but I will remember it because it is just so unusual.

Mind you, everybody else I have shown it to says, “Isn’t it just a picture of a boy standing by the side of the road?”.

John Voos is a Reuters photographer and EIC about to take up a new assignment with the UKI pictures reporting operation in London.

Life imitates art, even in video games.

While the Internet release of a new trailer for “Grand Theft Auto IV,” the next in the wildly popular murder-and-mayhem series from Take-Two’s Rockstar studio, had game fans in a frenzy, the company generated a completely different kind of buzz at a hotel in Manhattan’s Meatpacking District.

That’s where investors were finally having their way with Take-Two, which is known for sending parents into fits over violent, criminal and sexual content in their games.

The suits gave the Manhattan video game maker a real dressing down, in fact, knocking out the board and tossing its chief executive, ending years of frustration over losses, mismanagement and legal problems.

Meanwhile, the next chapter of the “Grand Theft Auto” saga is due in October and a newly released trailer has some wondering if its Russian-accented star is hinting toward the future when he says: “Life is complicated. I killed people. Smuggled people. Sold people. Perhaps here things will be different.”

Like, maybe he’ll take a job in a hedge fund? 

(Photo: Handout/Take-Two) 
        

It seems Joe Bravo is becoming a big enchilada in the art world, selling his paintings for up to $1,800 each, getting recognition from the Food Network, and… Well, yes, the Food Network, because it turns out he does his paintings on tortillas, something he began doing in college because he couldn’t afford to buy canvases.

Bravo is seen here with his painting of Che Guevara, inspired by the iconic Alberto Korda photo of the revolutionary. In the tortilla version, the artist says,  Che “is wearing sunglasses for that cool look..”

Uh, not to quibble with the creative process or anything, but that has been called “the most famous photograph in the world,” and a few people actually think Che looked reasonably cool even without accessorizing.  

Oddly Enough Blog

Los Angeles artist Joe Bravo stands in front of one of his tortilla paintings being exhibited at the Mexican Cultural Institute in Los Angeles March 29, 2007.  The exhibit has broken the gallery’s attendance records.   REUTERS/Lucy Nicholson

Chad Ruble has his usual weekly collection of great odd video clips, although the subject range is a bit more narrow than usual: cute animals, cute animals, cute animals, cute animals, and then a guy who decorated his apartment like something out of Star Trek.

That last one gives Chad the chance to blow most of his 2007 special effects budget, so it’s well worth watching.

Here’s Chad:

The leading scorer in Euro 2008 qualifying will come down to earth on Friday when he runs out for a team bottom of the English second division for whom he struggles to hold down a first-team place.

The relegation woes of Leeds United took a back seat for a few days as Northern Ireland’s David Healy scored a hat-trick against Liechtenstein and both goals in a 2-1 win over Sweden.

That made it nine goals in six qualifiers as Northern Ireland claimed top spot in their group above the Swedes, Spain and Denmark. His overall tally is 29 goals in 56 appearances - and that for a team who went 13 games without scoring not too long ago.

What Wayne Rooney would give for such a return after failing to score a competitive international goal for almost three years.

So how has Healy outscored more feted and far better paid strikers so comfortably? Perhaps the international experience doesn’t motivate players used to performing in front of huge crowds in major competitions as much as it does those whose bread and butter soccer is a little more mundane.

The step from a Champions League game against Barcelona in ram-full Camp Nou to an international against Andorra in the same city’s sparsely filled Olympic Stadium can hardly be described as up.

But when Healy says he feels as much pride playing for his country now as he did on his first appearance, you believe him. When the former Manchester United trainee says his country’s success is due to hard work and a great spirit, you can only wonder why such qualities are absent elsewhere.

An earlier post on this blog asked for nominations for Europe’s unsung heroes. How about Healy for starters?

Mitch Phillips is head of UK sports reporting for Reuters

Ukrainian coach Mikhail Zubkov and his daughter Kateryna Zubkova hold hands as they leave a courthouse in Melbourne March 29, 2007. Police have placed an intervention order on Zubkov after television pictures showed him fighting with his daughter at the world championships on Tuesday. REUTERS/David Callow

In at least two of your current photo captions regarding Mikhail Zubkov and his daughter, you fail to mention in what sport he is a coach and which world championships they were attending.

The only way I could deduce it was the swimming world championships is that Australia is mentioned.

F.S.

Yes, the sport should have been identified: GBU Editor
 

Brazil, clear favourites to host the 2014 World Cup, have finally started work on getting ready for the big event.

After plenty of talk but no action, the country badly needed a gesture to show the Brazilian Football Confederation (CBF) is taking the bid seriously — the laying of a first sleeper in a new high-speed railway, perhaps, or driving the first stake into a brand new stadium.

So it was amid great expectation that the CBF unveiled this week… a T-shirt. Or rather lots of T-shirts reading “2014 bid nation” (the CBF’s imagination clearly having run riot).

Coach Dunga wore one on the touchline during Tuesday’s friendly against Ghana in Stockholm, the team wore them as they took to the field and CBF chief Ricardo Teixeira has been handing them around to all and sundry.

It will need a lot more serious work if the World Cup really is going to come here. The CBF openly admits the country does not have a single stadium which can at present host World Cup games.

More worryingly, how are the fans going to get around? The country has almost no passenger-carrying railways, most highways are in a shambolic state and air travel, fraught with delays due to outdated equipment and overworked controllers, cannot cope with local demand.

South America is due to stage the 2014 World Cup under FIFA’s rotation system and the CBF believes it can easily see off Colombia, the only country to join the race.

But not all Brazilians share that optimism. In an Internet poll carried out by the Estado do Sao Paulo newspaper this week, 73 percent said the country could not stage the event. If they are right, FIFA may have to carry out Sepp Blatter’s threat to go north.

Brian Homewood is a Reuters sports correspondent based in Rio de Janeiro

Media coverage of politicians had grown harsher, which could have a detrimental effect on future leaders, former U.S. Presidents  George H.W. Bush and Bill Clinton told the CTIA wireless technology conference.

Increasingly there is an adversarial relationship between the press and politicians that, compared to his tenure, is “even tougher, uglier”, Bush, the 41st U.S. president and father of the current president said.

“I’ve never seen it quite as harsh, as mean, as it is right now for the president and for a lot of other people in public life,” said Bush.
 

Bush has previously accused the media of “personal animosity” toward his son.

Clinton said he and Bush had received their share of tough questions when they were in office, but cited a blurring of the lines between sensationalism and mainstream journalism. He added that a more even discussion of politics could come from Internet sites and Web blogs. He cited the tendency of blogs to scrutinize one or two subjects rather than a full plate of issues. 

“They can do research and get the facts and don’t have to bad-mouth people. Sometimes they do, but they don’t have to,” Clinton said. “I think all these blog sites are creating a whole new opportunity for public debate that may revitalize our politics in an old fashioned way.”

Clinton and Bush lauded the role telecommunications and technology can play in improving healthcare, spreading individual freedoms and eradicating poverty. 
As for personal technology, the former presidents said they were dedicated to using cell phones or wireless devices.

“The hour I’m here is about the longest I can be away from my Blackberry,” Bush said.

What do you think? Is the media climate too “harsh”? Do blogs add life to the public conversation or just create more noise? 

That was the question that New Yorker columnist Ken Auletta sprang on McClatchy Chief Executive Gary Pruitt on Thursday at a discussion about the future of newspapers hosted by The New Yorker, Conde Nast and the Newhouse journalism school at Syracuse University.

That would have been a softball question for moderator Auletta to get the panel started — if the guy sitting next to Pruitt hadn’t been Dean Baquet, the former Los Angeles Times editor (and current Washington Bureau Chief at The New York Times) who was ousted by parent company Tribune in November for disobeying management’s command that he cut more staff.

Pruitt’s answer, proving he’d make an able fencer:

“I doubt it, but I have no idea. And I really don’t know the circumstances. It would be very difficult to put myself in that position.”

And then:

“We at McClatchy want our editors to stand up when they have to, and assert themselves if they feel that there are issues or problems. We don’t want them to be punished for asserting themselves.”

Is this what they mean by “be careful what you wish for?”