Bullock returns to Extremely Loud

NEW YORK (AP) — Sandra Bullock wasn’t looking to return to acting when Stephen Daldry called about Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close.

Bullock’s last film, 2009’s The Blind Side, was the kind of career apogee of which most actresses dream, winning her a best actress Academy Award in what essentially amounted to a coronation of Bullock as America’s most beloved female movie star.

But the accomplishment — which would normally be followed by a wave of projects to capitalise on the momentum — was soon marred by public scandal. Bullock’s husband, Monster Garage host Jesse James, was revealed to have been unfaithful. The fallout, which led to divorce, was covered relentlessly by the tabloids. Bullock went ahead and adopted a baby boy.

When Daldry, the director of The Hours and The Reader, approached her about Extremely Loud, Bullock wasn’t sure she would return to acting at all.

“I was perfectly content to be permanently broken,” she says. Recognising how that might sound in print, she smiles at the unintended hint of her personal turmoil, and adds “time-wise” to clarify the break as one from moviemaking.

“I honestly didn’t think I was in a place where I wanted to work or wanted to step out of where I was,” she says. “I wasn’t prepared. But the opportunity was louder than my head.”

The chance was to play a supporting but key role in Daldry’s adaptation of Jonathan Safran Foer’s novel. In it, Bullock plays the mother of an uncommonly bright, precocious child (Thomas Horn), whose father (Tom Hanks) dies on Sept 11. It’s a particularly wrenching story about grief and reconciliation.

“What a great way to get back on the horse,” says Bullock, who was staying at a hotel 20 blocks from the World Trade Center on 9/11. “It was hard, but it was what it’s supposed to be.”

It took some courting. Daldry visited Bullock at her house, and when he asked her what she might bring to the role, the actress was frank.

“I said, ‘I haven’t the slightest idea’,” she says. “I was like, ‘The well is deep. It’s your job to stop it or get it’.”

Bullock and Daldry have a charming, easy manner with each other, showering one another with compliments. Asked why he pursued her for the part, the British director quips, “She’s cheap as chips.”

“I have watched just about everything you’ve ever made,” says Daldry. Bullock, whose self-deprecating humour is undimmed, doesn’t miss a beat: “I’m so sorry.”

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Rapper against the ropes

NASHVILLE, Tennessee (AP) — Rapper Young Buck could lose his name and other assets in a bankruptcy case that the rapper says is frustrating his attempts to sign with a new record label.

Davidson County Bankruptcy Judge George Paine converted the artiste's bankruptcy from Chapter 11 reorganisation to Chapter 7 liquidation this week.

YOUNG BUCK... could lose name and assets  1/1

The trustee administering his estate has said she plans to sell the trademarked 'Young Buck' name along with other assets. The platinum artiste, whose real name is David Darnell Brown, told The Tennessean he was close to signing a recording deal with New Orleans-based Cash Money Records 

To date, creditors have submitted 22 claims totaling US$11.5 million in Young Buck's bankruptcy case, including US$10 million that the record label G-Unit Records says Young Buck owes them over a contract dispute

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Bob's grandchild fined for weed

DONISHA Prendergast, the granddaughter of reggae legend Bob Marley, was on Thursday fined $100 after pleading guilty in the Corporate Area Resident Magistrate's Court to possession of a small quantity of marijuana.

The 26-year-old Prendergast paid the fine and avoided being sent to jail for 10 days.

PRENDERGAST... cops found three bags containing the ganja  1/1

Prendergast was arrested on November 21 after police officers, who were doing spot-checks along Water Lane in downtown Kingston, searched her car and found three clear plastic bags containing the ganja.

Prendergast had missed her court date on Wednesday and was accompanied to court by her lawyer Diane Jobson.

Based on a request by Jobson, the conviction was not recorded against Prendergast's name.

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Muslim sect claims Nigeria church attacks; 25 dead

LAGOS, Nigeria (AP) — An explosion ripped through a Catholic church during Christmas Mass near Nigeria's capital today, killing at least 25 people, officials said. A radical Muslim sect waging an increasingly sophisticated sectarian fight claimed the attack and another bombing in the restive city of Jos, as explosions also struck the nation's north-east.

The Christmas Day attacks show the growing national ambition of the sect known as Boko Haram, which is responsible for at least 491 killings this year alone, according to an Associated Press count. The assaults come a year after a series of Christmas Eve bombings in Jos claimed by the militants left at least 32 dead and 74 wounded.

The first explosion on Sunday struck St Theresa Catholic Church in Madalla, a town in Niger state close to the capital, Abuja, authorities said. Rescue workers recovered at least 25 bodies from the church and officials continued to tally those wounded in various hospitals, said Slaku Luguard, a coordinator with Nigeria's National Emergency Management Agency.

His agency already has acknowledged it didn't have enough ambulances immediately on hand to help the wounded. Luguard also said an angry crowd that gathered at the blast site hampered rescue efforts as they refused to allow workers inside.

"We're trying to calm the situation," Luguard said. "There are some angry people around trying to cause problems."

In Jos, a second explosion struck near a Mountain of Fire and Miracles Church, government spokesman Pam Ayuba said. Ayuba said gunmen later opened fire on police guarding the area, killing one police officer. Two other locally made explosives were found in a nearby building and disarmed, he said.

"The military are here on ground and have taken control over the entire place," Ayuba said.

The city of Jos is located on the dividing line between Nigeria's predominantly Christian south and Muslim north. Thousands have died in communal clashes there over the last decade.

After the bombings, a Boko Haram spokesman using the nom de guerre Abul-Qaqa claimed responsibility for the attacks in an interview with The Daily Trust, the newspaper of record across Nigeria's Muslim north. The sect has used the newspaper in the past to communicate with public.

The US Embassy in Nigeria's capital of Abuja had issued a warning Friday to citizens to be "particularly vigilant" around churches, large crowds and areas where foreigners congregate.

Several days of fighting in and around the north-eastern city of Damaturu between the sect and security forces already had killed at least 61 people, authorities said. On Sunday, local police commissioner Tanko Lawan said two explosions struck Damaturu, including a blast near government offices. He declined to comment further, saying police had begun an operation to attack suspected Boko Haram sect members.

In the last year, Boko Haram has carried out increasingly bloody attacks in its campaign to implement strict Shariah law across Nigeria, a nation of more than 160 million people.

Boko Haram has splintered into three factions, with one wing increasingly willing to kill as it maintains contact with terror groups in North Africa and Somalia, diplomats and security sources say.

Sect members are scattered throughout northern Nigeria and nearby Cameroon, Chad and Niger.

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Buju files appeal

LAWYERS representing imprisoned Reggae artiste Buju Banton today filed an appeal to have his conviction reversed in the United States Court of Appeal for the Eleventh Circuit in Georgia.

The attorneys — David Oscar Markus, Mona Markus, Anita Margot Moss and Marc Seitles — are contending that Banton's conviction should be reversed and the case should be dismissed with prejudice or that he should receive a new trial.

Banton, whose real name is Mark Myrie, was sentenced in June this year to 10 years' imprisonment by United States magistrate Jim Moody in the Sam M Gibbons US Court in Tampa Florida. He was found guilty of conspiring to negotiate a drug deal in a police controlled warehouse in Florida.

The lawyers are contending that the district court erred in failing to grant Myrie’s judgment of acquittal as a matter of law, where:

The undisputed evidence is that Myrie did not agree to participate in the drug conspiracy that eventually was reached among others;

Myrie had almost no participation in the telephone call forming the basis of the government’s charge that he aided and abetted the “facilitation” of a drug conspiracy, and in fact the telephone call in question did not facilitate a drug conspiracy in any event;

Whether the district court erred in failing to find that Myrie was entrapped as a matter of law, where there was no evidence that Myrie was predisposed to engage in a cocaine distribution scheme, and the undisputed evidence was that the government pursued a lengthy, intense, unrelenting campaign to target Myrie through an unsupervised paid informant who was desperate to earn a cut of the deal; and

Whether the district court erred in failing to dismiss the case based on the expiration of the speedy trial clock.

The attorneys are also contending that the district court erred in failing to find that Myrie was entrapped as a matter of law, as he was not predisposed to participate in a cocaine conspiracy and his involvement was the result of improper government inducement.

They will also argue that Myrie demonstrated reluctance to participate in a drug conspiracy and his consistent efforts to avoid following up government informant Alex Johnson’s consistent and emphatic efforts to draw Myrie in and because the speedy trial clock ran long before his case was tried, the case should have been dismissed with prejudice.

Setting aside excludable days, the 70-day clock expired in this case, 93 days before Myrie was initially tried, more than double the amount of time permitted by the Speedy Trial Act, the lawyers will also argue in their bid to free Buju Banton, who is now languishing in a Miami, Florida-based prison.

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Rapist with bitten-off penis gets 100 years

A man whose penis was almost bitten off when he held a woman at gunpoint and forced her to have oral sex has been sentenced to a total of 108 years for offences which included rape, robbery with aggravation illegal possession of firearm and indecent assault.

He will only serve 25 years as Justice Bryan Sykes ordered yesterday that the sentences for the eight offences must run concurrently.

Patrick Drysdale, 25, mason, of Sunny Hill, St Thomas, was convicted in the Gun Court of two counts of rape, two counts of robbery with aggravation, indecent assault, wounding with intent and illegal possession of firearm. The sentences ranged from 10 to 25 years.

Drysdale got the maximum sentence of three years' imprisonment for indecent assault involving the woman who bit him on his penis.

penis almost severedEvidence was given that after he forced the woman to have oral sex with him, she bit him on his penis almost severing it and he stabbed her several times. He was sentenced to 25 years for wounding with intent.
The police found Drysdale at the hospital suffering from an injury to the penis. When questioned he said that he was in bed with a woman when her jealous lover came home and hit him with a piece of chain on his penis. The penis which was bandaged was almost severed.
The Crown led evidence that on June 20, 2008, Drysdale committed the offences in Stony Hill, St Andrew. He went to the homes of three women, robbed and raped two of them, indecently assaulted the third woman and then wounded her.
Drysdale was released from prison a few weeks before he committed the offences. He had previous convictions for illegal possession of firearm and ammunition.

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Venezuela turns over alleged drug lord to US

CARACAS, Venezuela (AP) — Venezuela has handed a top Colombian drug trafficking suspect to US authorities.

The US had offered a $5 million reward for information leading to the arrest of Maximiliano Bonilla Orozco, known as "Valenciano". Bonilla was captured in Venezuela last month.

He was turned over to US authorities at Caracas' international airport today and led aboard a plane.

The US State Department had listed Bonilla among its eight most-wanted Colombian drug traffickers after leftist rebels.

US officials say Bonilla sent tonnes of cocaine to the United States through Central America and Mexico, dealing extensively with Mexico's Zetas drug cartel.

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