Serbian Gay Movie The Parade Eases Homophobia, Ethnic Tensions In The Balkans

? MARCH MADNESS

Serbia isn?t exactly the most LGBT-friendly country in Europe?attempts to throw Pride parades have been met with suppression and violence?but a new gay-themed movie there isn?t just rockin? the box office, it?s challenging long-held cultural and anti-gay prejudices.

Winner of the audience-favorite award at the prestigious Berlin Film Festival, Serbian filmmaker Srdjan Dragojevic?s The Parade is a black comedy about a gay couple from Belgrade who hire a war vet to protect their upcoming Pride march. He, in turn, hires a rag-tag bunch of fighters from Bosnia, Albania and Croatia to provide some extra muscle.

Call it The Fabulous Seven?or maybe The LGB-Team. (Okay, we?ll stop.)

Released in October, The Parade is the biggest blockbuster in the region in ages?drawing more than a half-million viewers?and is equally popular across the former Yugoslavia?s various republics. (No mean feat given the brutal wars and ethnic cleansing there in the 1990s.)

?The whole region is united for the first time in liking this film,? Dragojevic tells the AP. Given the suffering and devastation the Balkans have seen, he says ?it is very important for people to recognize? that it is irrelevant what nationality you are, how you pray or who you go to bed with.?

?

Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/queerty2/~3/w4UQAyN7ndo/

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Western Union debuts WUPay digital platform, misses the point of convenience entirely

Modernization's not for everyone -- just take a look at Western Union. That 19th century institution's finally getting its virtual act together, introducing a new digital payments platform today, dubbed WU Pay, that sadly does not involve laundering dough through the late, great ODB's hip hop clan. No, this forward-facing system, built upon its eBillme acquisition, takes a backwards approach, eschewing direct payment options for something more circuitous. Customers that opt-in for the service at checkout from any number of partnered merchants, like Kmart or Sears, won't have to link to their credit card accounts or even offer up any financial info. Instead, once the item is purchased, they'll receive a bill via email that can then be paid online or at one of the company's brick-and-mortar sites. Sound unnecessary to you? We sure agree. Now if only this innovation involved Marty McFly and Jason Alexander personally delivering those funds -- that's a service overhaul we can get behind. Check out the PR after the break.

Continue reading Western Union debuts WUPay digital platform, misses the point of convenience entirely

Western Union debuts WUPay digital platform, misses the point of convenience entirely originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 23 Mar 2012 05:53:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Source: http://www.engadget.com/2012/03/23/western-union-debuts-wupay-digital-platform-misses-the-point-of/

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White teens gets life sentence in Miss. hate crime

A white Mississippi teenager pleaded guilty on Wednesday to fatally running over a man with a truck because he was black, and received a life prison sentence for a crime the presiding judge said left "a great stain" on the Southern state.

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Deryl Dedmon, 19, received two concurrent life sentences for the racially motivated murder of 49-year-old James Craig Anderson, who died after being beaten and mowed down in a motel parking lot last year.

Dedmon's admission that he killed Anderson because of his race doubled the teen's penalty under the state's hate crime statute.

"I was young, I was dumb, I was ignorant," Dedmon said during his court hearing in Jackson. "I was full of hatred."

The sentencing came as the shooting death of a black teenager by a neighborhood watch captain in Florida has again put a national spotlight on the issue of minorities being targeted due to the color of their skin.

Anderson, a Nissan auto worker, was returning to his car before dawn on June 26 when he was confronted by a group of white teenagers in a motel parking lot.

The teens had been drinking at a birthday party and drove to Jackson specifically to harass African-Americans, said Hinds County Assistant District Attorney Scott Rogillio.

Anderson was physically attacked by the group before Dedmon deliberately ran over him with a Ford F-250 truck, Rogillio said. Anderson died at the scene.

Dedmon yelled "white power" during the attack, Rogillio said.

"Your prejudice has brought a great stain on the state of Mississippi," Circuit Court Judge Jeff Weill Sr. told Dedmon.

Mississippi has a long legacy of racial discrimination and was a focal point of Civil Rights activity during the 1960s and since. The racist Ku Klux Klan was prominent in the state for decades and remnants of the group remain.

Copyright 2012 Thomson Reuters. Click for restrictions.

Source: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/46814245/ns/us_news-crime_and_courts/

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Ahoy, matey!: Hugh Grant at 'Pirates' premiere

LONDON (AP) ? Hugh Grant is stepping away from his usual romantic fare ? to walk the plank.

The British actor is starring in "The Pirates! In an Adventure with Scientists," his first animated film role. He plays a pirate captain ? called Pirate Captain ? on a quest to win the Pirate of the Year Award.

He joined co-star David Tennant at the premiere of the latest adventure from Aardman Animations, creators of "Wallace and Gromit," in London on Wednesday.

The "Notting Hill" actor admitted he doesn't see many similarities between himself and his pirate persona.

"I looked at it and I thought "well I'm nothing like that, this is terrible casting." So I actually had to adapt myself, and I had to do a bit of acting for once," he joked.

Pirate Captain takes his crew, voiced by such British actors as Martin Freeman, Brendan Gleeson, Russell Tovey and Ashley Jensen, from Blood Island to London, helping Tennant's scientist along the way.

On the red carpet, ex-"Dr. Who" star Tennant shared his excitement about being part of a film with such a big English cast:

"It is a bit like being called up for some sort of national service. You think 'well, I am serving my country,'" he said. "Clearly that is an exaggeration, but you do feel like in terms of the acting establishment you're being called out to bat and you don't want to mess up."

"The Pirates! In an Adventure with Scientists" opens in the U.K. on March 28 and in the U.S. on April 27 with the title "The Pirates! Band of Misfits."

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/ahoy-matey-hugh-grant-pirates-premiere-170856512.html

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Lawmakers: Fake pharmacies price gouging on drugs

TRENTON, N.J. (AP) ? Members of Congress investigating shortages of crucial drugs are targeting nearly two dozen fake pharmacies allegedly set up solely to buy and resell the drugs at huge markups.

Two senators and one U.S. representative on Wednesday sent letters to three individuals believed to have obtained licenses to operate both a pharmacy and a prescription drug wholesale business in a "shell game" ? to make money by taking advantage of the drug shortage crisis that's disrupting hospital and other patient care. The letters request detailed information by April 11 about the businesses and their purchases and resale of cancer and other lifesaving drugs.

The letters were sent by Rep. Elijah Cummings, the ranking Democrat on the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, along with Sen. John D. Rockefeller, chairman of the Senate Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation, and Sen. Tom Harkin, chairman of the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions.

Cummings sent letters to 19 other pharmacies that may be doing the same thing, but investigation of those companies is in an earlier stage.

The three lawmakers have been investigating the role of the wholesalers, known as "gray marketers," together with government agencies and hospital and pharmacy groups. Their letters state that they've found evidence of pharmacies speculating by buying prescription drugs in short supply from legitimate wholesalers, transferring those medicines to their own wholesale company and then selling them to other gray marketers at exorbitant markups.

"If it's not illegal, we're going to have to find a way to make it illegal, because this threatens virtually every person in the country," Cummings told The Associated Press in an interview.

Laws vary by state, but generally wholesalers may only buy drugs from manufacturers or other licensed wholesalers.

Drug shortages have been wreaking havoc in hospital pharmacies, forcing doctors to postpone chemotherapy and surgeries and give patients treatments that may be less effective, have more-serious side effects or cost substantially more.

Patients have had to endure unnecessary discomfort, preventable complications and longer hospital stays, which is costing hospitals millions of extra dollars. Most of the drugs that are unavailable or hard to find are generic injectable drugs that normally would be cheap, including sedatives for surgery and powerful antibiotics and painkillers.

An Associated Press investigation last fall found at least 15 deaths since 2010 have been caused by the shortages, which have set a record high in each of the past five years. Future treatments also are endangered, as patient testing of new experimental medicines has been delayed or halted by lack of the standard medicines against which they must be compared.

The lawmakers' investigation found evidence of one transaction where a licensed pharmacy called Priority Healthcare bought a chemotherapy drug called fluorouracil for $6.77 per vial. A distributor it owned called Tri-Med America allegedly soon sold the cancer medicine to another company for more than 10 times the initial price ? $69 per vial.

The other two pairs of companies under investigation are Columbia Med Services and Columbia Medical Distributors, and LTC Pharmacy and International Pharmaceuticals Inc.

The presidents of Priority Healthcare/Tri-Med America and Columbia Med Services/Columbia Medical Distributors did not return calls seeking comment. Jessica Hoppe, who is listed as the president and owner of both LTC Pharmacy and International Pharmaceuticals, declined to comment.

"We are following this paper trail and intend to see whether people with life-threatening illnesses had trouble finding the medications they need because of these companies' business practices," Rockefeller said in a statement.

Cummings noted a doctor who testified at a Nov. 30 hearing of his committee, Dr. Michelle Hudspeth of Medical University of South Carolina, said "she has to practice medicine as if she were in a Third World country because of the shortage of medicines."

LTC Pharmacy, which has been under investigation by the North Carolina Board of Pharmacy, surrendered its operating permit last September, and International Pharmaceuticals was denied a permit renewal. The two businesses shared offices in a building in Durham, N.C., but had no actual pharmacy, according to the board.

The letter to Hoppe noted it appears International Pharmaceuticals has active wholesaler licenses in at least 23 other states.

Manufacturing lapses and production shutdowns for contamination and other serious problems are behind many of the shortages, and there's no quick fix for those problems. Other reasons include increased demand for some drugs, companies ending production of some drugs with tiny profit margins, consolidation in the generic drug industry and limited supplies of some ingredients.

Yet some gray marketers ? who may not be licensed, authorized distributors ? have used the crisis to make money by cornering the market on drugs in short supply and then offering them to desperate hospital pharmacists and cancer clinics at outrageous markups.

Currently, there are 268 prescription drugs in short supply in the U.S. That includes 34 new shortages reported this year, 204 that began in 2010 or 2011 and remain unresolved, and others that have persisted even longer, according to Erin R. Fox, manager of the University of Utah Drug Information Service, which tracks national drug shortages.

A report based on a survey last summer said that hospitals forced to buy crucial drugs from wholesalers outside their normal distribution chain were being charged markups averaging 650 percent. In one case, a drug for dangerously high blood pressure, normally priced at $25.90 per dose, was being offered to hospitals for $1,200.

___

Online:

http://democrats.oversight.house.gov/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=5647&Itemid=119

___

Linda A. Johnson can be followed at https://twitter.com/LindaJ_onPharma

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/lawmakers-fake-pharmacies-price-gouging-drugs-143502210.html

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A Foolproof Strategy To Recruit MLM Distributors | Business Growth ...

Learning how to recruit MLM disitributors is critical to unlocking the full potential of a network marketing business. Recruiting and team building are the keys that unlock the doors of leverage and residual income. So that brings us to the all important question: ?How do you recruit MLM distributors??

You may be surprised to learn the real truth of effective MLM recruiting. Most network marketers instantly get busy speaking about their product and company with everybody who will remain still long enough to listen. Although this may appear logical at first glance it actually becomes somewhat counter productive when you examine the larger picture. An MLM business is built on the foundation of relationships, this truth should be a guiding factor in your marketing efforts. While the product, company or opportunity may have some consequence on a person?s decision to become an MLM distributor, their prime decision factor is the level of comfort they feel with the sponsor. This means that the real priority for anyone seeking to sponsor new distributors is not product or company promotion, but instead personal branding.

Powerful personal branding requires a modification in your thinking, because you in essence become the product on display. If you are to effectively recruit MLM distributors, you need to answer the questions that they are asking. For instance, a prospective distributor is wondering what type of assistance they will get with their new business. In your personal marketing you need to field that question for them. Developing content that displays your ability to support their efforts will answer this question in their minds. Content based marketing, such as blog posts, articles and videos can be very effective mechanisms for developing confidence in the mind of the prospect. When they view the level of support that you are giving to those who are not a part of your business team, they will readily accept that the support you offer to your downline is even greater.

Your branding also needs to addres the question of whether the prospective MLM distributor is going to like you. Social media is a great branding tool for this purpose. Regularly interact with those who have chosen to connect with you on social media networks such as Facebook and LinkedIn. By taking an interest in their lives, you are demonstrating their value in your eyes and you create the foundation for a growing relationship. In fact many of the people you connect with in this manner will take an interest in your business, because you have taken the time to get to know them on a more personal level.

The real root of personal branding is the principle of giving yourself away. By giving away your experiences, shared wisdom and knowledge, people will find value in you as a leader. They will attach themselves to you at an increasingly greater level with each interaction. It is in these interactions where you can simply invite them to work with you at a much closer level by becoming a part of your network marketing team.

It is not difficult to recruit MLM distributors, when you focus on bringing perceived value into their lives.

Learning to recruit MLM distributors is a result of effective personal marketing. Carl Willis teaches the strategies to recruit mlm distributors online.

Source: http://business-growth-strategies.info/a-foolproof-strategy-to-recruit-mlm-distributors/

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Law firm fires 14 employees for wearing orange shirts

Janice Doble, in the orange shirt that got her fired (Michael Laughlin/Sun Sentinel)They weren't wearing sagging pants or revealing clothing. But dressing in an orange shirt is apparently enough to get fired at one Florida law firm, where 14 workers were unceremoniously let go last Friday.

In an interview with the Ft. Lauderdale Sun-Sentinel, several of the fired workers say they wore the matching colors so they would be identified as a group when heading out for a happy hour event after work. They say the executive who fired them initially accused them of wearing the matching color as a form of protest against management.

Orange is widely considered to be one of the most visible colors to the human eye. Orange vests are worn by most hunters as a safety precaution and by school crossing guards. Most prisoners are required to wear orange jump suits.

The color orange is arguably Florida's defining color. The self-described "Sunshine State" is widely known for its orange juice exports.

The law offices of Elizabeth R. Wellborn, P.A. offered "no comment" to Sun-Sentinel reporter Doreen Hemlock, but four ex-employees tell the paper they were simply wearing their orange shirts to celebrate "pay day" and the upcoming Friday group happy hour.

"There is no office policy against wearing orange shirts. We had no warning. We got no severance, no package, no nothing," Lou Erik Ambert told the paper. "I feel so violated."

Ironically, had the employees been wearing orange as a form of protest, it would have been illegal to fire them, ABC News reports.

[Related: Fla. aims to be first state to drug test public workers]

After the 14 employees were fired, an executive said anyone wearing orange for an "innocent reason" should speak up. At least one employee immediately denied any involvement or knowledge of a protest and explained the happy hour color coordination. Nonetheless, they were still fired.

"I'm a single mom with four kids, and I'm out of a job just because I wore orange today," Meloney McLeod told the paper.

[Related: High cost of multi-tasking]

And there's really nothing anyone can do about the terminations since Florida is an at-will state, meaning employers can fire an employee who doesn't have a contract "for a good reason, for a bad reason or even for the wrong reason, as long as it's not an unlawful reason," Eric K. Gabrielle, a labor and employment lawyer at Stearns Weaver, told the Sun-Sentinel. Gabrielle said there was no apparent violation of the law in this case.

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