Sabtu, 09 November 2013
Typhoon Haiyan’s death toll expected to rise sharply
>>>
out of typhoon-stricken
philippines
are staggering after one of the most powerful typhoons in history. tonight the
international red cross
estimates
typhoon haiyan
left more than 1,000 people dead. communications are difficult.
humanitarian relief
crews are slowly making their way into the hardest hit areas. wind gusts reached 175 miles per hour.
storm surges
as high as trees laid waste to
towns and villages
. speaking from the city of
tacloban
,
philippines
interior minister said, quote, all systems, all vestiges of modern living, communications, power, water, all are down. tonight the pentagon says it is dispatching
u.s. military forces
to the region to assist in the recovery.
tacloban
, the city hardest hit, is 360 miles from manila. that's where the
humanitarian response
is being coordinated. it's where we find correspondent angus walker now with the very latest. angus?
>> reporter:
as every hour passes we are getting a clearer picture of the devastation here as rescuers begin to make their way into the worst affected areas. tonight one thing is clear. the damage is far worse than people had feared. it's been
24 hours
since
super typhoon
haiyan roared ashore in the
philippines
with winds of more than 150 miles an hour. flattening entire cities.
>>
there were heavy winds, heavy rains. no power, no cell phones while the storm passed.
>>
we have so many
dead people
. we don't have bags. bags for the dead.
>> reporter:
the death toll stands now at
1200
but is expected to rise sharply as rescue teams reach remote villages.
>>
thousands of homes are completely wiped out. not only the rain. then the water sweeps in and it can take out entire
towns and villages
.
>> reporter:
one of the hardest hit areas, the city of
tacloban
home to 220,000 people. surrounded on three sides by water. surging
ocean waves
40 feet high submerged most of the city.
>>
the devastation is -- it's -- i don't have the words for it. it's really horrific.
>> reporter:
reporter ata marulo reported live as the typhoon beared down. later retreating to a second floor hotel as the streets quickly became rivers.
storm chaser
jim edds rode out the storm tweeting this picture as the storm was approaching. on facebook today he wrote, amount of casualties significant, so many bodies
left behind
from the surge. security becoming a concern with looting.
water supply
getting low. these satellite photos show the immense storm, the strongest ever to hit land, eclipsing the entire country as it moved over the
island nation
of nearly 100 million. the massive storm caused widespread flooding, triggered landslides and knocked out power and communication to large parts of the country. tonight, vietnam is now on alert as the storm pushes west forecast to hit sunday afternoon. more than half a million residents evacuated to shelter and higher ground. experienced
aid workers
say they haven't seen anything like this since the
asian tsunami
in
2004
. that's not a comparison that should be
Kidnapped woman rescued by cousin in Louisiana, police said
By Simon Moya-Smith, Staff Writer, NBC News
A woman who had been kidnapped two days earlier was found Friday with multiple stab wounds inside an abandoned house in Louisiana -- and freed by family members in a daring operation, police said.
The man who allegedly held her hostage for 30 hours in a vacant home in Ducson, La., was shot and killed by the woman's cousin as he rescued her, police said.
Authorities of the Lafayette Parish Sheriff's Office had been searching for Bethany Arceneaux, 29, since late Wednesday, after her car was found abandoned outside her child's day care center, Capt. Kip Judice told NBC News.
Judice said police believed Scott Thomas, 29, who is the father of Arceneaux's son, was the abductor. The two had an ongoing domestic dispute, and Arceneaux had a restraining order against Thomas, Judice added.
The woman's family decided to look for Arceneaux themselves. On Friday, a group of about 20 relatives formed a search party and began to look for her on foot, Judice said.
While on the trail, Arceneaux's cousin allegedly heard cries coming from inside an abandoned home in a sugar field located about 10 miles from where the woman was last seen.
Armed with a gun, the man forced his way into the home. As he made his way through the house, Thomas allegedly began stabbing Arceneaux several times. The woman's cousin then fired several shots at Thomas and then fled the premises with Arceneaux, Judice said.
The woman confirmed to authorities that Thomas was shot by her cousin as Thomas was stabbing her.
Arceneaux is undergoing treatment at the Lafayette General Medical Center and is in good condition, Judice said.
When police entered the vacant home, Thomas was found dead.
He had allegedly held Arceneaux at knifepoint for 30 hours before she was rescued from the home, Judice added.
Arceneaux's cousin is not in police custody and has not been charged with a crime. He is cooperating with authorities, Judice said.
Under Louisiana law, a justifiable homicide statute allows an individual to defend himself as well as others he feels are in danger, which includes great bodily harm or death, police said.
Venezuela releases Miami Herald reporter detained for two days
Miami Herald Andean Bureau Chief Jim Wyss
By Andrew Cawthorne, Reuters
CARACAS - Venezuelan authorities released a Miami Herald reporter on Saturday after detaining the American two days ago near the border with Colombia where he was researching a story ahead of next month's local elections, the paper said.
Jim Wyss was handed over unharmed and in good spirits to U.S. diplomats in Caracas, the Herald said.
"I'm very grateful for everybody who worked to help resolve this problem," Wyss said, according to a story on the newspaper's website. "And I'm thankful to the Venezuelan authorities for helping accelerate this process."
President Nicolas Maduro's government, which accuses Western media of fanning an international campaign to destabilize his socialist government, has not commented on the case.
The Herald said soldiers arrested Wyss on Thursday evening after he sought an interview with military officials in the Andean city of San Cristobal, where he was preparing a story on economic shortages and the December 8 municipal elections.
"Venezuelan authorities said Wyss was taken into custody because he did not have permission to report in the country," the paper added. Wyss is based in Bogota, Colombia.
Wyss quipped about tight living conditions, and his diet of ham sandwiches, in the Caracas detention center where he was held. "It's like living in a bar with bunkbeds," he said.
Since winning an election to replace Hugo Chavez in April, Maduro has leveled a stream of accusations of U.S.-inspired plots and sabotage against his socialist administration.
An American filmmaker was arrested and held for nearly two months on accusations of spying, while three U.S. diplomats were expelled in September on similar charges. Officials say foreign correspondents are complicit in the "silent war" against him.
The Maduro government is under pressure over Venezuela's economy, where inflation is running at an annual 54 percent and scarcity of basic goods are common. The opposition is hoping next month's nationwide municipal polls will turn into a protest vote against Maduro.
Copyright 2013 Thomson Reuters. Click for restrictions.
Artist's career reaches from Garbage Pail Kids to museum walls
Nov. 8, 2013 at 1:51 PM ET
Copyright: Art Spiegelman
Art Spiegelman may have done more to popularize the term “graphic novel” than anyone. But he’s still not comfortable with it.
“I concede that it’s the best marketing phrase ever invented,” the 65-year-old Pulitzer Prize winner told TODAY.com, describing a New Yorker cartoon showing two businessmen looking into a bookstore window, with one saying, “I guess now we have to pretend to like graphic novels.” But, he added, “I’ve never been comfortable with any of the phrases” describing what he creates. “I’m most comfortable with ‘Co-Mix.’”
Which is the name of the retrospective of Spiegelman’s work opening Friday at New York City’s Jewish Museum, as well as a companion book fully titled “Co-Mix: A Retrospective of Comics, Graphics and Scraps.”
Copyright: Art Spiegelman
A self-portrait of the artist by Art Spiegelman.
The name is apt, because Spiegelman’s career has been a colorful mix of high and low culture: everything from underground comics to New Yorker covers, from Garbage Pail Kids to “MAUS,” his acclaimed graphic novel about the Holocaust. But Spiegelman likes “Co-Mix” because it comes “without the thought that comics have to be comical – the idea of escaping the preconceptions.”
With “MAUS,” which depicted Auschwitz prisoners as talking mice and their Nazi captors as cartoon cats, Spiegelman not only escaped preconceptions about comics – he shattered them. “MAUS” attracted critical adulation and academic study, but not everyone got what Spiegelman was up to.
Copyright: Art Spiegelman
Spiegelman's "MAUS," which depicted Holocaust victims as cartoon mice, was the first graphic novel to win a Pulitzer Prize.
“Early on it seemed crazy to me that it would be put to a kind of secondary use that didn’t have anything to do with what I had in mind: a great way to teach people about the Holocaust,” he said. “I was trying to find a narrative, a long comic book that needed a bookmark. I needed a subject that required thinking deeply, that was the goal.” And so he turned to what he calls “the giant crater in the middle of the 20th century”: the Holocaust.
But some people didn’t see it that way. “Very early on, when every publisher on the planet was rejecting it, one letter said it was ‘too much like a sitcom,’” he recalled.
Still, “MAUS” not only went on to become the first graphic novel to win a Pulitzer Prize; it helped make comics downright respectable. “They’re now taught in universities,” Spiegelman pointed out. “Librarians love comics. Schools are beginning to look at them. There’s more happening than I can remember.”
It’s a far cry from Spiegelman’s youth, heyday of Mad magazine creator Harvey Kurtzman, whom Spiegelman cites as a key influence “at the moment I was trying to find myself as a cartoonist.” Other influences include classic newspaper comics “Krazy Kat” (“it has poetic interpretations, but there’s also a cat that gets hit with a brick”), “Little Nemo in Slumberland,” “Dick Tracy” and “Little Orphan Annie.”
“’Annie’ was an important influence on ‘MAUS’ because of the blank eyeballs that allowed you to enter emotionally,” Spiegelman explained.
Copyright: Art Spiegelman
One of Art Spiegelman's often controversial New Yorker covers.
But there’s much more than “MAUS” to the “Co-Mix” retrospective, including "In the Shadow of No Towers," Spiegelman's reaction to the Sept. 11 attacks on the World Trade Center, near which he lived in 2001 with his wife, editor and fellow artist Francoise Mouly. And then there are the often controversial covers he drew for the New Yorker, such as his depiction of a kiss between a black woman and a Hasidic Jew. And though he hasn’t worked for the New Yorker since 2001, Spiegelman drops smoothly into gear when challenged to imagine what he’d draw for next issue’s cover.
“Let’s see, we’re near Thanksgiving,” he said. “Maybe a bunch of Indians sitting around McDonald’s, looking at the wrappers.”
But instead of drawing for the New Yorker, Spiegelman has a different project these days: "My wife and I are launching Toon Books," hardcover books for early readers aged 4 and up featuring comics of the same high caliber he and Mouly showcased in their groundbreaking 1980s magazine RAW.
"People say Kindles and iPads are going to make paper obsolete, which is crazy," he said. "The book as an object is becoming more and more grounded."
Chris Hondros / Getty Images
Spiegelman created Garbage Pail Kids, irreverent spoofs of the Cabbage Patch Kids craze of the 1980s.
But Spiegelman is just as enthused about Garbage Pail Kids, gross-out parodies of Cabbage Patch dolls that he created to the delight of kids and disgust of parents in the 1980s. “I feel a total continuity with them,” he told TODAY.com. “I’m very proud that the exhibit starts with a wall of Garbage Pail Kids and leaps into the rest.”
In contrast, when “Co-Mix” was shown at the Pompidou Centre in Paris earlier this year, “it was a very small space” that started with a giant sketch from “MAUS,” Spiegelman recalled. “As we walked in, Francoise said, ‘You’re the only one who could get away with it.”
Read an excerpt from “Co-Mix: A Retrospective of Comics, Graphics and Scraps.”