What Wolfram has accomplished with Alpha is nothing short of stunning. Sure, it can't help you find videos of cats dressed as sharks riding Roombas, but the company's goals were always much loftier. Using the technological foundation it built with Alpha and Mathematica, it's now working on bring its ...FILE - In this May 31, 2002 file photo, Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat pauses during the weekly Muslim Friday prayers in his headquarters in the West Bank city of Ramallah. Al-Jazeera is reporting that a team of Swiss scientists has found moderate evidence that longtime Palestinian leader Arafat died of poisoning. The Arab satellite channel published a copy of what it said was the scientists' report on its website on Wednesday, Nov. 6, 2013.(AP Photo/Lefteris Pitarakis, File)
FILE - In this May 31, 2002 file photo, Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat pauses during the weekly Muslim Friday prayers in his headquarters in the West Bank city of Ramallah. Al-Jazeera is reporting that a team of Swiss scientists has found moderate evidence that longtime Palestinian leader Arafat died of poisoning. The Arab satellite channel published a copy of what it said was the scientists' report on its website on Wednesday, Nov. 6, 2013.(AP Photo/Lefteris Pitarakis, File)
RAMALLAH, West Bank (AP) — Swiss scientists have found evidence suggesting Yasser Arafat may have been poisoned with a radioactive substance, a TV station reported Wednesday, prompting new allegations by his widow that the Palestinian leader was the victim of a "shocking" crime.
Palestinian officials have long accused Israel of poisoning Arafat, a claim Israel has denied. Arafat died under mysterious circumstances at a French military hospital in 2004, a month after falling ill at his Israeli-besieged West Bank compound.
The findings reported Wednesday appear to be the most significant so far in an investigation into Arafat's death initiated by his widow, Suha, and the satellite TV station Al-Jazeera.
Last year, Switzerland's Institute of Radiation Physics discovered traces of polonium-210, a deadly radioactive isotope, on some of Arafat's belongings. Soil and bone samples were subsequently taken from Arafat's grave in the West Bank.
On Wednesday, the TV station published the Swiss team's 108-page report on the soil and bone samples. The results "moderately support the proposition that the death was the consequence of poisoning with polonium-210," the report said.
Repeated attempts to reach the main author, Patrice Mangin, or the Lausanne-based institute's spokesman, Darcy Christen, were unsuccessful Wednesday night.
Experts not connected to the report said the results support the case that Arafat was poisoned, but don't prove it.
Suha Arafat told Al-Jazeera she was stunned and saddened by the findings.
"It's a shocking, shocking crime to get rid of a great leader," she said.
She did not mention Israel, but suggested that a country with nuclear capability was involved in her husband's death. "I can't accuse anyone, but how many countries have an atomic reactor that can produce polonium?" she said.
Polonium can be a byproduct of the chemical processing of uranium, but usually is made artificially in a nuclear reactor or a particle accelerator. Israel has a nuclear research center and is widely believed to have a nuclear arsenal, but remains ambiguous about the subject.
Arafat's widow demanded that a Palestinian committee that has been investigating her husband's death now try to find "the real person who did it."
The committee also received a copy of the report, but declined comment.
The head of the committee, Tawfik Tirawi, said details would be presented at a news conference in two days, and that the Palestinian Authority, led by Arafat successor Mahmoud Abbas, would announce what it plans to do next.
An official in Abbas' Fatah movement raised the possibility of taking the case to the International Criminal Court. "We will pursue this crime, the crime of the century," said the official, Abbas Zaki.
Raanan Gissin, who was an Israeli government spokesman when Arafat died, reiterated Wednesday that Israel had no role in his death.
"It was a government decision not to touch Arafat at all," he said, adding that "if anyone poisoned him, it could have been someone from his close circle."
Arafat died Nov. 11, 2004, a month after falling violently ill at his Ramallah compound. French doctors said he died of a massive stroke and had suffered from a blood condition known as disseminated intravascular coagulation, or DIC. But the records were inconclusive about what led to the DIC, which has numerous possible causes, including infections and liver disease.
Polonium is a rare and highly lethal substance. A miniscule amount can kill. Its most famous victim was KGB agent-turned-Kremlin critic Alexander Litvinenko, who died in London in 2006 after the substance was slipped into his tea.
The examination of the Arafat's remains found "unexpectedly high levels" of polonium-210, the Swiss team wrote.
Derek Hill, a professor in radiological science at University College London who was not involved in the investigation, said the levels of polonium-210 cited in the report seem "way above normal."
"I would say it's clearly not overwhelming proof, and there is a risk of contamination (of the samples), but it is a pretty strong signal," he said. "It seems likely what they're doing is putting a very cautious interpretation of strong data."
He said polonium is "kind of a perfect poison" because it is so hard to detect unless experts look for it using specialized equipment generally found only in government laboratories.
Bruce Goldberger, director of health forensic medicine at the University of Florida, said the report was appropriately cautious in saying it had found moderate support for the idea that polonium poisoning killed Arafat. It does not prove that idea, he said.
Yet, "what they did was extraordinary" in view of the limitations they faced, he said. Those include the lack of fresh body tissue to analyze, the years of polonium decay that would leave only tiny amounts to look for and the lack of medical and scientific knowledge about polonium poisoning.
Goldberger noted that Arafat did not show some classic signs of radiation poisoning, further muddying the strength of the conclusion.
Lawrence Kobilinsky, a professor of forensic science at the John Jay College of Criminal Justice in New York, also said the report does not prove Arafat died from polonium. He noted that other scientific teams are expected to issue reports on the case.
"It looks like he's been poisoned, but I would wait for the other groups to confirm it," he said. "It's not done until we get a confirmation. This is how science works"
Nathan Lents, deputy chair of the department of sciences at John Jay, said the report's results are consistent with a possible polonium poisoning, but "there's certainly not a smoking gun here."
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Associated Press writers Malcolm Ritter in New York, Josef Federman in Jerusalem, Gregory Katz in London, Lori Hinnant in Paris and John Heilprin in Geneva contributed to this report.
Associated PressSource: http://hosted2.ap.org/APDEFAULT/3d281c11a96b4ad082fe88aa0db04305/Article_2013-11-06-Arafat's%20Death/id-9d7f3ca8493b41f08b6bba9e8df697c1Bellator MMA returns to action tonight, November 8, for Bellator 107 at the WinStar World Casino in Thackerville, Oklahoma. Tonight’s card will be headlined by the Season 9 heavyweight final between Cheick Kongo and Peter Graham. The bout will be one of three tournament finals on the Spike TV main card.
MMAFrenzy will have full coverage tonight’s action beginning at 7PM ET with the online preliminary card and continuing through the night’s main card at 9PM ET.
Bellator 107 Results:
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The Day of the Dead celebrates, not only those who've passed, but our own mortality. And for this week's Shooting Challenge, you adopted its powerful symbol: The human skull.
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This photo provided by the FBI shows Paul Ciancia, 23. Accused of opening fire inside the Los Angeles airport, Ciancia was determined to lash out at the Transportation Security Administration, saying in a note that he wanted to kill at least one TSA officer and didn’t care which one, authorities said Saturday, Nov. 2, 2013. (AP Photo/FBI)
This photo provided by the FBI shows Paul Ciancia, 23. Accused of opening fire inside the Los Angeles airport, Ciancia was determined to lash out at the Transportation Security Administration, saying in a note that he wanted to kill at least one TSA officer and didn’t care which one, authorities said Saturday, Nov. 2, 2013. (AP Photo/FBI)
ALTERNATE HORIZONTAL CROP - This June, 2013 photo released by the Hernandez family Saturday, Nov. 2, 2013, shows Transportation Security Administration officer Gerardo Hernandez. Hernandez, 39, was shot to death and several others wounded by a gunman who went on a shooting rampage in Terminal 3 at Los Angeles International Airport Friday. (AP Photo/Courtesy Hernandez Family)
John S. Pistole, left, Administrator of Transportation Security Administration and Ana Fernandez, center, wife of TSA agent Gerardo Fernandez, victim at LAX shooting, before a press conference in Porter Ranch, Calif. on Saturday Nov. 2, 2013. A gunman armed with a semi-automatic rifle opened fire at Los Angeles International Airport on Friday, killing a Transportation Security Administration employee and wounding two other people in an attack that frightened passengers and disrupted flights nationwide. (AP Photo/Ringo H.W. Chiu)
Transportation Security Administration employees classify the luggage to return to passengers at Los Angeles International Airport's Terminal 3 on Saturday, Nov. 2, 2013. A gunman armed with a semi-automatic rifle opened fire at the airport on Friday, killing a Transportation Security Administration employee and wounding two other people in an attack that frightened passengers and disrupted flights nationwide. (AP Photo/Ringo H.W. Chiu)
From left to right, FBI Special Agent in Charge David L. Bowdich, United States Attorney Andre Birotte Jr., and Los Angeles Police Department Commander Andrew Smith in press conference to provide an update on the investigation of the shooting incident at Los Angeles International Airport (LAX), on Saturday Nov. 2, 2013 at Westwood Federal Building in Los Angeles. (AP Photo/Ringo H.W. Chiu)
LOS ANGELES (AP) — The unemployed motorcycle mechanic suspected in the deadly shooting at the Los Angeles airport set out to kill multiple employees of the Transportation Security Administration and hoped the attack would "instill fear in their traitorous minds," authorities said Saturday.
Paul Ciancia was so determined to take lives that, after shooting a TSA officer and going up an escalator, he turned back to see the officer move and returned to finish him off, according to surveillance video reviewed by investigators.
In a news conference announcing charges against Ciancia, U.S. Attorney Andre Birotte Jr. spelled out a chilling chain of events at LAX that began when Ciancia strode into Terminal 3, pulled a Smith & Wesson .223-caliber assault rifle from his duffel bag and fired repeatedly at point-blank range at a TSA officer. The officer was checking IDs and boarding passes at the base of an escalator leading to the main screening area.
After killing that officer, Ciancia fired on at least two other uniformed TSA employees and an airline passenger, who were all wounded. Airport police eventually shot him as panicked passengers cowered in stores and restaurants.
Ciancia, 23, remained hospitalized Saturday after being hit four times and wounded in the mouth and leg. The FBI said he was unresponsive and they had not been able to interview him.
The duffel bag contained a handwritten letter signed by Ciancia stating that he had "made the conscious decision to try to kill" multiple TSA employees and that he wanted to stir fear in them, FBI agent in charge David L. Bowdich said.
Federal prosecutors filed charges of first-degree murder of a federal officer and committing violence at an international airport. The charges could qualify him for the death penalty.
The FBI was still looking into Ciancia's past, but investigators said they had not found evidence of previous crimes or any run-ins with the TSA. They said he had never applied for a job with the agency.
Authorities believe someone dropped Ciancia off at the airport. Agents were reviewing surveillance tapes to piece together the sequence of events.
"We are really going to draw a picture of who this person was, his background, his history. That will help us explain why he chose to do what he did," Bowdich said. "At this point, I don't have the answer on that."
The note found in the duffel bag suggested Ciancia was willing to kill almost any TSA officer.
"Black, white, yellow, brown, I don't discriminate," the note read, according to a paraphrase by a law enforcement official briefed on the investigation. The official spoke on the condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak publicly.
The screed also mentioned "fiat currency" and "NWO," possible references to the New World Order, a conspiracy theory that foresees a totalitarian one-world government.
When searched, the suspect had five 30-round magazines, and his bag contained hundreds more rounds in boxes, the law-enforcement official said.
Terminal 3, the area where the shooting happened, reopened Saturday. Passengers who had abandoned luggage to escape Friday's gunfire were allowed to return to collect their bags.
The TSA planned to review its security policies in the wake of the attack. Administrator John Pistole did not say if that would mean arming officers.
As airport operations returned to normal, a few more details trickled out about Ciancia, who by all accounts was reserved and solitary.
Former classmates barely remember him and even a recent roommate could say little about the young man who moved from New Jersey to Los Angeles less than two years ago. A former classmate at Salesianum School in Wilmington, Del., said Ciancia was incredibly quiet.
"He kept to himself and ate lunch alone a lot," David Hamilton told the Los Angeles Times. "I really don't remember any one person who was close to him .... In four years, I never heard a word out of his mouth."
On Friday, Ciancia's father called police in New Jersey, worried about his son in L.A. The young man had sent texts to his family that suggested he might be in trouble, at one point even saying goodbye.
The call came too late. Ten minutes earlier, police said, he had walked into the airport.
In the worrisome messages, the younger Ciancia did not mention suicide or hurting others, but his father had heard from a friend that his son may have had a gun, said Allen Cummings, police chief in Pennsville, a small blue-collar town near the Delaware River where Ciancia grew up.
The police chief called Los Angeles police, who sent a patrol car to Ciancia's apartment. There, two roommates said that they had seen him a day earlier and he had appeared to be fine.
But by that time, gunfire was already breaking out at the airport.
"There's nothing we could do to stop him," Cummings said.
The police chief said he learned from Ciancia's father that the young man had attended a technical school in Florida, then moved to Los Angeles in 2012 hoping to get a job as a motorcycle mechanic. He was having trouble finding work.
Ciancia graduated in December 2011 from Motorcycle Mechanics Institute in Orlando, Fla., said Tina Miller, a spokeswoman for Universal Technical Institute, the Scottsdale, Ariz., company that runs the school.
A basic motorcycle mechanic course takes about a year, she said.
On Friday, as swarms of passengers dropped to the ground or ran for their lives, the gunman seemed to ignore anyone except TSA targets.
Leon Saryan of Milwaukee had just passed through security and was looking for a place to put his shoes and belt back on when he heard gunfire. He managed to hide in a store. As he was cowering in the corner, the shooter approached.
"He looked at me and asked, 'TSA?' I shook my head no, and he continued on down toward the gate," Saryan said.
Authorities identified the dead TSA officer as Gerardo I. Hernandez, 39, the first official in the agency's 12-year history to be killed in the line of duty.
Friends remembered him as a doting father and a good neighbor who went door-to-door warning neighbors to be careful after his home was burglarized.
In brief remarks outside the couple's house, his widow, Ana Hernandez, said Saturday that her husband came to the U.S. from El Salvador at age 15.
"He took pride in his duty for the American public and for the TSA mission," she said.
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Associated Press writers Alicia Chang in Los Angeles and Geoff Mulvihill in New Jersey contributed to this report.
Associated PressSource: http://hosted2.ap.org/APDEFAULT/3d281c11a96b4ad082fe88aa0db04305/Article_2013-11-02-US-LAX-Shooting/id-6b6ddfdc5219419baa4f06291dd5a903He's not checking your blood glucose levels. He's playing Words with Friends.
Here at Shots we get all kinds of pitches about the latest smartphone app that promises a profound improvement in our health. But truth be told, Candy Crush gets a lot more exercise than all those medical apps we've downloaded. And it turns out we're not alone.
Most of the 16,257 legit health apps aren't used much, with half of all Android health apps downloaded fewer than 500 times, according to a report from the IMS Institute for Health Informatics. The analysis excluded apps aimed at physicians and other health care providers.
The most popular apps are lifestyle apps — calorie counters and exercise trackers like MyFitnessPal. Just 159 of the apps use sensors to measure a person's health status, the report concludes. And most of those are exercise tools, like heart rate monitors.
Another problem: Most health apps don't do much. They're little more than digital dictionaries. Only about 2,000 apps let users enter data to do things like track their health.
And fewer than 2,000 apps dealt with specific a health issue like diabetes or anxiety. Mental health was the most popular topic, with 558 apps.
There are opportunities aplenty for creating tools to help patients manage chronic diseases and other more sophisticated apps, the report says. But there are challenges, too. One of them is demographic. The biggest consumers of health care are over 65, and they're the least likely to have a smartphone.
In September, the Food and Drug Administration issued guidance for medical app makers, which should make it easier to know which apps are medical devices that need FDA approval, and which are good to go without.
"Physicians can see the potential benefits of mobile healthcare apps but remain wary of formally recommending apps to patients without evidence of their benefit," the report says. Privacy and data security is a looming issue, too.
Until those issues are addressed, the report suggests, we'll be waiting for the Candy Crush of health apps.
FILE - This Oct. 18, 2013, file photo shows a Twitter app on an iPhone screen in New York. Twitter Inc. said in a regulatory filing Thursday, Oct. 24, 2013, that it is putting forth 70 million shares in the initial public offering. (AP Photo/Richard Drew, File)
The New York Stock Exchange says its test run of Twitter's initial public offering on Saturday was a success, as the exchange takes pains to avoid the technical problems that marred Facebook's debut.
While the NYSE frequently does testing on the weekend, this was the first time the exchange conducted a mock IPO. Early Saturday, traders from member firms gathered with NYSE staff to run simulated buy and sell orders, test the flow of those orders and open the stock.
"This morning's systems test was successful, and we're grateful to all the firms that chose to participate," NYSE spokeswoman Marissa Arnold said in a statement. "We are being very methodical in our planning for Twitter's IPO, and are working together with the industry to ensure a world class experience for Twitter, retail investors and all market participants."
Twitter will be the biggest technology IPO since Facebook went public in May 2012. While Nasdaq won Facebook's listing, one of the biggest IPOs in years, the debut was hit with trading delays and order failures. The Securities and Exchange Commission later fined Nasdaq $10 million, the largest sum ever levied against an exchange.
Twitter, which is expected to go public sometime before Thanksgiving, has chosen to list on the New York Stock Exchange. It plans to sell 70 million shares between $17 and $20 each for a possible take of $1.6 billion. Shares will trade under the ticker "TWTR."
This year has been a hot one for IPOs as sharp gains in the stock market have boosted demand for initial public offerings. Over 150 companies have gone public in the U.S. this year, up more than 50 percent from the same period in 2012, according to recent data from IPO tracking firm Renaissance Capital.
WASHINGTON (AP) — President Barack Obama is opening a six-week burst of fundraising for Democrats, offering an early look at how he'll frame the messy health overhaul rollout and recent government shutdown for donors and voters ahead of next year's pivotal midterm elections.
After putting political events on hold for about a month, Obama will return to campaign mode Friday in New York, where he'll speak at a top-dollar fundraiser for House Democrats, flanked by film producer Harvey Weinstein and prominent CEOs. He'll then head to another, closed-door fundraiser benefiting the national Democratic Party before returning to Washington.
Earlier Friday, Obama will visit a Brooklyn high school to showcase a rare partnership between public schools, a public university system and IBM that lets students finish high school with an associate's degree in computers or engineering.
His fundraising schedule condensed, Obama will headline at least nine fundraisers before the end of November for Democratic campaign committees. Michelle Obama and Vice President Joe Biden are holding their own events. Obama's spree will take him away from Washington more than a half-dozen times, from Florida to Texas to California.
Traditionally, the president is a party's most potent fundraising tool, and the effort isn't without potential reward for Obama. A return of Congress to full Democratic control next year would open the door to sweeping policies Obama would love to enact, but Republicans refuse to consider.
In sporadic fundraisers earlier in the year, when Obama was actively seeking better relations with Republicans, he avoided overt partisanship in his pitch to donors. His message was: I'll work with fair-minded lawmakers from either party, but the more power Democrats have in Congress, the better my chances for success.
But any semblance of comity between Obama and Republicans evaporated during the standoff over government funding and the debt ceiling, when the White House was accusing the GOP of holding hostages and threatening to burn down the house. Republicans' insistence that the government shut down unless Obama agreed to debilitating changes to his health care law made the lack of common ground all too clear.
So the immediate crisis averted, Democrats and Republicans alike are looking to the president's words on Friday for signs of how Obama and his party will cast the bitter fights in Washington as they gear up for 2014 races across the country.
"I recognize that the Republican Party has made blocking the Affordable Care Act its signature policy idea," Obama said this week at the White House. "Sometimes it seems to be the one thing that unifies the party these days."
More Americans blame Republicans than Obama for the 16-day shutdown, giving Obama and Democrats a new bludgeon to hammer Republicans and argue they must be voted out. Just 32 percent of Americans view the Republican Party favorably, according to a Washington Post-ABC News poll conducted Oct. 17-20, compared to 46 percent who view Democrats favorably.
The political blow to the GOP from the crisis has made some Democrats more bullish about retaking the House next year — an incredibly tall order that, if successful, would bolster Obama's prospects for achieving his second-term goals.
But at the same time, Obama is weighed down by the calamitous debut of the website for new insurance exchanges, raising the prospect that Obama's health care law will be more of a liability than an asset in 2014 even for Democrats who supported the law.
"I would take our position over theirs any day of the week," said Mo Elleithee, the Democratic National Committee's communications director. "We have been working to give people more benefits and increase their access to affordable health care, while Republicans shut down the government."
After winning re-election last year, Obama vowed to go all-in for Democrats by holding at least 20 fundraisers ahead of the midterm elections. Although Obama had planned to spread events out over many months this fall, Democratic officials say he was forced to put politicking on hold — first by the crisis over Syria's chemical weapons, then by the shutdown-and-debt debacle.
By and large, Democrats have been more successful than Republicans in leveraging the fiscal showdown to raise money, according to fundraising reports released by campaign committees for House and Senate. But Republicans say that's where Obama's usefulness to his party ends. After all, the nation's new health insurance program remains a tough sell even with independent voters, and Obama is personally unpopular in many of the southern, conservative-leaning states holding critical Senate elections next year.
"There's still not one Democrat candidate in a toss-up race who wants him visiting their district, because they know he's not wanted anywhere other than New York, San Francisco or Chicago," said Daniel Scarpinato, a National Republican Congressional Committee official.
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AP Director of Polling Jennifer Agiesta contributed to this report.
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Follow Josh Lederman on Twitter: http://twitter.com/joshledermanAP
Associated PressSource: http://hosted2.ap.org/APDEFAULT/89ae8247abe8493fae24405546e9a1aa/Article_2013-10-25-Obama/id-dfb9a2c285ec4abeb02a22038da52bb5BOSTON (AP) — Lance Lynn squeezed through a door leading into the Green Monster, shimmied along a cramped space behind the famed left-field wall and peered out a tiny metal slot in the Fenway Park scoreboard.
"A little snug for me," the burly St. Louis pitcher said.
Plenty of Cardinals got their first look at the century-old ballpark during a workout Tuesday, a day before they opened the World Series against the Boston Red Sox.
The Red Sox saw a neat sight, too. As they took batting practice at dusk, a giant, vibrant rainbow formed high in the sky beyond center field. Slugger David Ortiz noticed.
"Oh, yeah," he said. "It's a Dominican thing."
Whatever, Big Papi. Something special always seems to happen when the Redbirds and Red Sox meet, from Stan the Man vs. the Splendid Splinter, to Gibby vs. Yaz, to Pedro vs. Pujols.
Now, they're set to meet for the fourth time in "that Octobery kind of air," as Cardinals Game 1 starter Adam Wainwright described it.
Jon Lester will oppose him Wednesday night, facing a lineup that got a late boost. Allen Craig, who hit a major league-leading .454 with runners in scoring position but hasn't played since Sept. 4 because of sprained left foot, is set to return.
"I feel like I'm in a good spot," said the cleanup man, who will be the Cardinals' designated hitter.
Weather could be a factor. Temperatures are supposed to dip into the low 40s and rain is in the forecast.
Boston was listed as a slim favorite in the matchup between teams that tied for the big league lead in wins. The clubs haven't met in the regular season since 2008, and Red Sox speedster Jacoby Ellsbury was looking forward to this pairing that some are billing as the Beards vs. the Birds.
"It will be exciting to see some unfamiliar faces," he said.
Dustin Pedroia, Mike Napoli and many of their scraggly Boston teammates figure to get a good look at the Cardinals' crop of young arms, led by postseason ace Michael Wacha and relievers Trevor Rosenthal, Carlos Martinez and Kevin Siegrist.
Ortiz is the link to the Red Sox team that swept St. Louis in the 2004 Series — Boston never trailed at any point — and ended an 86-year championship drought.
"Obviously I'm aware of the history of the two teams," Ellsbury said. "Once the first pitch happens, all that goes out the window."
The Red Sox are trying to win their third crown in 10 years. St. Louis is aiming to take its second title in three years and third in eight seasons.
"Some of us have some pretty bad memories of being here in 2004, and we're looking to kind of right that ship," St. Louis manager Mike Matheny said.
Matheny was the Cardinals' catcher that year, backed up by rookie Yadier Molina. Now Molina is considered the best defensive catcher in baseball, charged with trying to stop Ellsbury and a Red Sox team that's run a lot in the postseason.
"It's fun to be part of this history, to be here in Fenway Park, to be part of this Series against Boston," Molina said.
"It's different to play here overall. Playing defense, offense, pitching. It's different, but at the same time it's fun," he said.
David Freese grew up in St. Louis and became MVP of the 2011 Series. He heard about Stan Musial vs. Ted Williams in 1946, knew about Bob Gibson facing Carl Yastrzemski in '67 and recalled watching on TV when Red Sox reliever Keith Foulke fielded Edgar Renteria's tapper to finish off 2004.
"I remember the comebacker that ended it. The sweep. You don't expect a World Series to end in four games," the 30-year-old third baseman said.
Freese said he'd always hoped to get a chance to play at Fenway, and he got his first look Tuesday.
After Matheny stood near the mound and pointed out the particulars of the dirt triangle in center field, Freese stepped in for batting practice. He launched a long drive that hit high off the Green Monster in left-center, the loud thwack echoing all around the ballpark.
"That's my Wall ball," he hooted to teammate Matt Holliday.
Good for a hitter, maybe not so great for a pitcher.
"A ballgame can change with one swing of the bat in this ballpark," said Wacha, who also climbed into the wall. "It's pretty crazy. Crazy dimensions, that's for sure."
A cliché-laden tale offering too few insights about urban malaise among young migrant workers in Beijing.
Asian Future, Tokyo International Film Festival
Tang Kailin, Shu Yao, Wang Daotie, Yin Shanshan
Yang Huilong
It's perhaps apt that two of the major onscreen emotional breakdowns in Today and Tomorrow involve characters bawling their eyes out while singing well-known musical numbers about dislocation and disappointment. Yang Huilong's directorial debut about the three disfranchised youngsters in Beijing is abundant in second-hand emotions and lacking in original ideas in both aesthetics and narrative -- and most devastatingly, it's missing a genuine understanding of and empathy toward the have-nots cast to the wayside as China lurches towards its glaring capitalist future.
Today and Tomorrow betrays a wide range of influences from yesteryears: the handheld camera work depicting angst-ridden, lustful young people living in gloomy rooms harkens back to the work of Sixth Generation Chinese filmmakers like Lou Ye and Wang Xiaoshuai, while the TV melodrama gets a look-in with plot points about characters choosing between profit and principle (think Teng Huatao's hit series Wo Ju) and caricatured characters (the prostitute with a heart of gold; excessively effeminate fashion designers). The film has been given some festival pedigree after its bow in Tokyo International Film Festival's Asian Future section, but its middling mix of mainstream and alternative approaches might put off viewers of both cinematic camps.
PHOTOS: Inside Hollywood's Surprise Trip to 'China's Oscars'
Set in the soon-to-be-demolished migrant-workers ghetto of Tangjialing in Beijing's northwestern outskirts, the film revolves around three disillusioned provincial-born twenty-somethings whose miserable material existence in the Chinese capital makes them part of the "ant tribe." No need to fret for those who don't know the backdrop and the term: Yang has made sure viewers will understand everything by playing out official announcements about the demolition plans -- not just once, but three times throughout the film -- and also an oddly-inserted radio program news bulletin snippet about the underemployed and underpaid workers toiling in the city. It's the kind of exposition that betrays a lack of elliptical approach towards the story -- a formalist flaw that mirrors the story that follows.
The story begins with a couple, the jobless Jie (Wang Taodie) and the fashion-design college graduate Ranran (Shu Yao) moving into a cramped room next to their friend Wang Xu (Tang Kaikin) -- the first time the pair have had a space to their own, and a footing that might allow them to make inroads into a stable life in Beijing. Needless to say, it's a greasy social pole they're trying to scale; Ranran is forced to endure the advances of the tailor she is an apprentice to, while Wang's dreams of becoming a CEO are constantly upended by either his conscience (when he refuses to partake in crooked practices as an insurance salesman) or his intellect (when he saves himself from a pyramid scheme unfolding in a disintegrating back-alley room). And Jie does, well, mostly nothing -- with his main vocation being lamenting about having done nothing.
And so this triumvirate of jaded young minds march on, their enthusiasm dimmed and hopes trampled with Jie's seemingly ill-advised attempts to sell his girlfriend's portfolio to established designers, while Wang's affection for a streetwalker (Yin Shanshan) only end in stones being thrown and flats being emptied out. So far, so realistic -- until the characters' anguish is somehow resolved, all thanks to humility and human persistence.
If this sounds uplifting to the point of being dogmatic, one is to be reminded that Today and Tomorrow begins with the aforementioned public-information announcement ("Let us create a wonderful future!") and ends with an upward-looking shot of the Chinese national flag fluttering in the wind in Beijing's Tiananmen Square. It would be erroneous to daub Yang's film as propaganda, but it's certainly fair to say the film, like state ideology, which praises resilience and suppresses rebellion, reduces a social problem into this simple, hope-springs-eternal discourse.
But what's most disturbing is how the film fails to connect with the downtrodden when it posits itself as a champion of the underdogs. In one of the final scenes of the film, Wang Xu -- who is happily working away in a small glass bottle factory -- is asked by a middle-aged colleague why a university graduate like him would want to become a laborer. Without battling an eye, the young man says he's treating his job as merely a break, a "year off" before he goes in for the kill in the corporate universe again.
Pity his comrades who have no such futures to aspire to; same goes to Ranran's neighbors whom she dreams of as bumbling quirks in a reverie about parading her dress along the corridor of her tenement -- a presaging of the good news she will inevitably receive later, a stroke of luck that wouldn't befall the others. This negligence is consistent with how the low are left nameless (the prostitute is never called by name, even if the character is listed as "Zhang Hui" in the credits) and how the Tangjialing community is merely a backdrop to the three characters' lives, its erasure (along with its down-and-out inhabitants) from history only returned to in a brief onscreen text before the credits roll at the end. Today and Tomorrow certainly reveals an uncertain future -- for Chinese filmmaking and Chinese society in general.
Asian Future, Tokyo International Film Festival
Production Company: Beijing Jiamao Pictures Television Culture
Director: Yang Huilong
Cast: Tang Kailin, Shu Yao, Wang Daotie, Yin Shanshan
Producer: Wang Yaxi
Executive Producer: Ursula Wolte
Screenwriter: Lin Shiwei
Director of Cinematography: Sun Tian
Editor: Hugues Danois
Music: Henri Huang
Sound Director: Liu Yang
In Mandarin
90 minutes
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