Legendary, China Film teaming to make blockbusters

HONG KONG (AP) Legendary Entertainment, the Hollywood studio behind "The Hangover" franchise, is teaming with state-owned China Film Group to make more global blockbusters as it advances a delayed expansion in the rapidly growing Chinese movie market.

Their deal is the latest example of growing collaboration between entertainment companies in the world's two biggest movie markets.

Legendary, which also made "Inception" and "The Dark Knight," said its Chinese venture, Legendary East, signed an agreement with the Chinese company's unit, China Film Co., on Thursday in Beijing. The deal calls for the companies to fund development and production of multiple films over three years.

Their first collaborations will be announced in the coming months. Legendary said each is planned as a US-China co-production. That means they can get around China's import restrictions that limit the number of foreign movies shown on the country's 12,000 screens to 34 each year.

The companies said they plan to produce movies for global audiences that will be "tentpole-scale" in other words, the big-budget, highly promoted productions that earn enough box-office revenue to support the whole studio, in the same way that a tentpole holds up a tent.

No specific details were released.

In a statement, China Film Co. Chairman Han Sanping said the partnership will allow the companies to "make films that are more appealing to filmgoers, creating new genres that, through the magic of film, bring greater variety to audiences around the world."

Faced with stagnant box-office growth at home, Hollywood studios are keen to break into China, now the world's second-biggest film market. Box-office receipts in China totaled $2.7 billion last year and pushed the country's movie market past previous second-biggest, Japan, according to the Motion Picture Association of America.

Legendary East was set up in 2011 with the aim of making one or two "major, event-style films" starting in 2013. But the company had remained quiet since then and a plan to raise $220.5 through a deal with a Hong Kong construction company was scuppered by rocky financial markets.

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Online:

Legendary Entertainment: http://www.legendary.com

Eurozone unemployment hits record 12.2 percent

LONDON (AP) Unemployment across the 17 EU countries that use the euro hit another record high in April, official figures showed Friday, the latest in a series of ignominious landmarks for the ailing single currency zone.

Eurostat, the EU's statistics office, said Friday that unemployment rose to 12.2 percent in April from the previous record of 12.1 percent the month before. Another 95,000 people joined the ranks of the unemployed, taking the total to 19.38 million. At this pace, unemployment in the eurozone could breach the 20 million mark this year.

The figures, once again, mask big disparities among countries. While over one in four people are unemployed in Greece and Spain, Germany's rate is stable at a low 5.4 percent.

The differences are particularly stark when looking at the rates of youth unemployment. While Germany's youth unemployment stands at a relatively benign 7.5 percent, well over half of people aged 16 to 25 in Greece and Spain are jobless. Italy's rate has ticked up to over 40 percent.

"Youth joblessness at these levels risks permanently entrenched unemployment, lowering the rate of sustainable growth in the future," said Tom Rogers, senior economic adviser at Ernst & Young.

The differences reflect the varying performance of the euro economies Greece, for example, is in its sixth year of a savage recession. Germany's economy has until recently been growing at a healthy pace.

As a whole, the eurozone is in its longest recession since the euro was launched in 1999. The six quarters of economic decline is longer even than the recession that followed the financial crisis of 2008, though it's not as deep.

Part of the cause has been European governments' focus on cutting debt by raising taxes and slashing spending programs. With many governments still pulling back on spending and business and consumer confidence still low, economists do not expect any dramatic recovery to emerge over the coming months.

The sharpest change in unemployment rates among the 17 euro countries was in Cyprus, which saw its jobless rate rise to 15.6 percent from 14.5 percent.

The small Mediterranean island nation this year became the fifth euro country to seek financial assistance. The difference with the other bailouts was that the country was asked to raise a big chunk of its rescue money from bank depositors a shock decision that led to a near two-week shutdown of the banks and battered economic confidence.

The European Central Bank has sought to make life easier for Europe's hard-pressed businesses and consumers by cutting its main interest rate to the record low 0.5 percent earlier this month.

Another cut is possible, but most economists say it's unlikely, even though the inflation rate is still under the ECB's target of just below 2 percent.

Eurostat said Friday that inflation in the eurozone rose to 1.4 percent in the year to May from the 38-month low of 1.2 percent recorded in April. It blamed rising food, alcohol and tobacco prices for the uptick.

Analysts said the ECB is more likely to take measures to shore up lending to small and medium-sized businesses, one of the main job creators in Europe. Such companies are currently not taking out many loans for fear the economy might worsen and because banks are charging high rates.

"So far the ECB's actions have not translated into lower lending rates for businesses and households, failing to boost activity," said Anna Zabrodzka, economist at Moody's Analytics.

China's Tiananmen Mothers criticize Xi for lack of reforms

By Sui-Lee Wee and Maxim Duncan

BEIJING (Reuters) - A group of families demanding justice for the victims of China's 1989 Tiananmen Square crackdown has denounced new President Xi Jinping for failing to launch political reforms, saying he was taking China "backwards towards Maoist orthodoxy".

The Tiananmen Mothers activist group has long urged the leadership to open a dialogue and provide a reassessment of the 1989 pro-democracy movement, bloodily suppressed on June 4 that year by the government which labeled it "counter-revolutionary".

In an open letter released on Friday through New York-based Human Rights in China, the group said Xi "has mixed together the things that were most unpopular and most in need of repudiation" during the time of former paramount leaders Mao Zedong and Deng Xiaoping, the latter who oversaw the suppression of the protests.

"This has caused those individuals who originally harbored hopes in him in carrying out political reform to fall into sudden disappointment and despair," the group said.

Xi became Communist Party chief in November and president in March at a time of growing public pressure to launch long-stalled political reforms.

Some intellectuals had predicted that Xi would follow in the footsteps of his father, Xi Zhongxun, a reformist former vice premier and parliament vice chairman. Xi has tried to project a softer and more open image than his predecessor, Hu Jintao.

But Xi's government has clamped down on free expression on the Internet and detained anti-corruption activists, giving no sign the party will ever brook dissent to its rule.

The Tiananmen Mothers said they had not seen Xi "reflect upon or show remorse in the slightest for the sins committed during the three decades of Maoist communism".

"What we see, precisely, are giant steps backwards towards Maoist orthodoxy," the group said.

The leader of the Tiananmen Mothers group, Ding Zilin, called on Xi to "be courageous enough to take up the responsibility of history and pay the debts left by his predecessors".

"Everyone knows that a just resolution to the June 4 issue, a re-evaluation of June 4, will not happen by itself. It needs to be tied to progress in China's political reform and democratization," Ding, 77, told Reuters this week.

"SENSITIVE TIME"

Asked about the letter, Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Hong Lei said China had long ago "reached a clear conclusion" about June 4. The successes of the past two decades "shows that the path we have chosen serves the interest of the Chinese people", he added.

The government has already moved to limit the activities of dissidents ahead of the anniversary.

Wu Lihong, an environmental activist from central China and one of the letter's signatories, said he had been banned from travelling to the United States to receive an award.

"They don't want me bad-mouthing China to the Americans at this sensitive time of year," he said by telephone.

After initially tolerating the student-led demonstrations in the spring of 1989, the Communist Party sent troops to crush the protests on the night of June 3-4, killing hundreds.

The topic remains taboo in China and the leadership has rejected all calls to overturn its verdict.

A handful of people remain in prison, 24 years on, according to the Dui Hua Foundation, a U.S. group that works for the release of Chinese political prisoners.

While China grapples with thousands of protests a year, over everything from pollution to corruption and illegal land grabs, none of these demonstrations has even come close to becoming a national movement that could threaten the party's rule.

(Additional reporting by Ben Blanchard and Terril Yue Jones; Editing by Robert Birsel)

US Marshals auction scammer's diamond, other loot

LAS VEGAS (AP) Want to own a 5-carat diamond from a Texas scammer?

The jumbo jewel and other treasures confiscated by the U.S. Marshals Service are up for auction in Las Vegas this weekend.

Buyers can preview the gold and silver bullion, coins, jewelry and watches from federal crime cases between 11 a.m. and 4 p.m. Friday at the Las Vegas Convention Center.

The auction itself starts at 10 a.m. Saturday and will be simulcast on the Internet.

Among the other items are 6.6 pounds of gold pellets from a Southern California resident caught up in a $100 million Medicare fraud scheme. The starting bid for that collection is $120,000.

The Marshals Service auctions items from cases a few times a year. Proceeds benefit victims of crimes and supplement law enforcement programs.

Hunters for Amelia Earhart plane wreckage excited by sonar image

By Malia Mattoch McManus

HONOLULU (Reuters) - A team of researchers seeking to solve the mystery of aviator Amelia Earhart's 1937 disappearance say a sonar image taken from just beyond the shore of a remote Pacific island could be a piece of wreckage from her plane.

A forensic imaging specialist for a research team that conducted a $2.2 million expedition to the island of Nikumaroro searching for Earhart's plane last year said the image could represent a wing or part of the fuselage from Earhart's aircraft.

Earhart and her navigator, Fred Noonan, departed Papua New Guinea on July 2, 1937, during her quest to circumnavigate the globe along an equatorial route. But they disappeared that day and emergency searches did not locate them.

The International Group for Historic Aircraft Recovery (TIGHAR) said it needs to send an expedition back to Nikumaroro, in the Republic of Kiribati, to verify that the image of something apparently lodged below an undersea cliff represents a piece of Earhart's plane.

TIGHAR released images last year from the July expedition to Nikumaroro, 800 miles southwest of Honolulu, that it said could be a field of man-made debris with remnants of Earhart's plane.

The latest sonar image was spotted in March by a member of TIGHAR's online community, said a post on the group's website.

"It looks unlike anything else in the sonar data, it's the right size, it's the right shape and it's in the right place," a statement on the TIGHAR website said this week.

"The resolution on the sonar does not suffice to conclusively determine what this is," Jeff Glickman, the forensic imaging specialist for TIGHAR, said in a phone interview.

"It is unique, and suggestive of being man made. It is in the right place, but whether it's a fuselage or a wing is difficult to say," Glickman said.

He added that "there is always the possibility" the image is of part of a boat that had nothing to do with Earhart.

Richard Gillespie, executive director of TIGHAR, has theorized that Earhart's plane was washed off the reef by surf after Earhart and her navigator landed on Nikumaroro.

Gillespie has said circumstantial evidence collected on previous trips to Nikumaroro makes a strong case for his theory that Earhart ended her days as a castaway, ultimately perishing in the island's harsh conditions.

Items that have been discovered include what appears to be a jar of a once-popular brand of anti-freckle cream from the 1930s, a clothing zipper from the same decade, a bone-handled pocket knife of the type Earhart carried, and piles of fish and bird bones indicative of a Westerner trying to survive.

TIGHAR did not say on its website when the group expects to be able to return to the island.

(Reporting by Malia Mattoch McManus; Writing by Alex Dobuzinskis; Editing by Cynthia Johnston and Eric Beech)

Billy Joel surprises New York high school

NEW YORK (AP) Billy Joel was back in high school.

The singer surprised an assembly full of students at the Frank Sinatra School of the Arts in the borough of Queens on Thursday, appearing with Tony Bennett, who opened the school in 2001 through his Exploring the Arts program.

Joel performed songs on two different pianos onstage he sang "New York State of Mind" on one and "She's Got a Way" on the other. In between his performances, he answered questions from students.

The first: "What do you think is one of your biggest mistakes?"

"My biggest mistake was signing a lot of contracts that I didn't know what they were about," said Joel, who released his first album in 1971. "I signed away a lot of my rights record royalties, publishing rights, copyrights and it took me years to get that stuff back."

One male student asked for a hug as the audience cheered on, another had the 64-year-old sign his yearbook and a young girl got an autograph for her mother.

The crowd of 400 students brought a playful side out of Joel, who was lively with the students.

When asked who his favorite collaborator was, the Grammy winner answered: "Probably Elle Macpherson. That was a good collaboration," he said of the Australian model he dated in the 1980s.

One girl asked Joel if he would play "Uptown Girl."

"It's my favorite song," she gushed.

"It sounds like crap without harmonies and drums," Joel replied.

"I can be your harmony," she added to laughs.

Joel did not graduate with his high school class and instead was given a diploma 25 years later. He has made a number of visits to colleges in recent years including a recent trip to Vanderbilt that went viral.

He said in an interview that his favorite moment in school was cutting class to go play the piano in the auditorium. He also said he was greatly affected by one of his teachers.

"I had a good chorus teacher and he encouraged me to become a musician. That's my greatest memory of school an adult said, 'You should consider becoming a professional musician,'" he recalled. "I'd never heard (that) before in my life and that kind of changed my life."

Bennett's Exploring the Arts program supports 14 schools in New York and will launch three schools in Los Angeles this year. He and his wife, former teacher Susan Crow, kept Joel's appearance a secret since March.

"I had teachers texting me last night, 'Susan, who's coming?' My lips are sealed," Crow said.

Joel's interaction with the students was a memorable moment for Bennett, a Queens native.

"It's something that will stay with them forever and ever," he said.

Joel, who was born in the Bronx, said he was teased when he would get piano lessons since that teacher also taught ballet.

"I would walk by the guys on my block (and they'd say), 'Where's your tutu?' They'd knock the books out of my hand," Joel recalled, which earned a stream of "awws" from the students.

"But then I took up boxing," he said.

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Online:

http://www.billyjoel.com/

https://tonybennett.com/

http://franksinatraschoolofthearts.org/

http://www.exploringthearts.org/

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Follow Mesfin Fekadu at http://www.twitter.com/MusicMesfin

Winfrey to Harvard grads: Learn from your failures

CAMBRIDGE, Mass. (AP) The invitation from Harvard University caught Oprah Winfrey at a low point. Her new TV network was struggling, branded a flop in the media, when Harvard President Drew Gilpin Faust called last year to ask Winfrey to address 2013 graduates.

The request came "in the very moment when I had stopped succeeding," Winfrey recalled.

She headed for a long shower to think ("It was either that or a bag of Oreos," she joked) and emerged resolved to change her story by the time her speech rolled around.

A year later, Winfrey said, her Oprah Winfrey Network has found its footing and her approach to facing setbacks had been validated. Stumbles are inevitable but not permanent, Winfrey told graduates Thursday.

"I want you to remember this: There is no such thing as failure," she said. "Failure is just life trying to move us in another direction."

Winfrey spoke during the afternoon session of Harvard's 362nd commencement before a packed Harvard Yard. The media mogul and former talk-show host urged graduates to find their own story, which she described as their true calling or purpose.

"When you inevitably struggle and find yourself stuck in a hole, that is the story that will get you out," she said.

Her own calling, she said, was to use television to show people "that what unites us is ultimately far more redeeming and compelling than anything that separates (us)."

Winfrey's speech dipped into politics, as she referred to entrenched partisanship that's stymied legislation she said most Americans favor, including stronger background checks for gun purchases and a path to citizenship for immigrants in the country illegally.

Winfrey urged graduates to break through divisions and spoke of a lesson she learned from doing thousands of interviews. Every person from George W. Bush to Barack Obama to Beyonce, "in all her Beyonce-ness" asks the same thing when the interview is over: "Was that OK?"

People want to be validated and know that they're being understood, Winfrey said. She challenged graduates to do that by personally connecting with people as a way to bridge divides.

"Even though this is the college where Facebook was born, my hope is that you will have the courage to go out and have conversations with people you disagree with," she said.

Ultimately, graduates need to be true to themselves and open to sharing who they are, she said.

"What you learn, teach; what you get, give," Winfrey said. "That, my friends, is what gives your life purpose and meaning."