Recent productions have included Gaddafi: A Living Myth

The English National Opera is to cut 10% of its staff, axing about 45 jobs. The ENO said the losses, to include performers and technical staff, were needed to make it “artistically and financially viable in the long term”.

It is aiming to cut fixed costs - £20m of its £30m turnover - saying it feared reduced funding if government money to the Arts Council did not increase.

Bectu union said it would “strongly” fight any cuts. Union leaders are due to meet ENO management next week.

In a letter to staff, ENO chief executive Loretta Tomasi warned of the cuts at a time of “box office uncertainties”.

It is thought the opera will reduce core orchestra and chorus members, employing more freelancers for large productions.

It currently retains a 50-strong chorus regardless of the size of productions.

Salaries and overheads account for two-thirds of its £30m turnover.

“Many options have been considered to achieve increased flexibility and a decrease in these ‘fixed’ costs and, whilst we believe it is vital that ENO retains a strong core of staff, the contractual overhaul includes the potential loss of around 45 jobs across the company,” said Ms Tomasi.

‘Olympics costs’

Gerry Morrissey, assistant general secretary of Bectu, which represents technical and support staff, said: “On the face of it, it seems as if management is wanting to casualise its workforce.”

He added: “This announcement comes on the back of the government reducing grants to the arts over the last couple of years and most companies are, at best, expecting a standstill budget for the next financial year.

“We cannot help but believe part of this is down to expenditure on the Olympic Games by the Department for Culture, Media and Sport.”

He said the government had failed to consider the “significant impact” organisations like the ENO had on the economy.

The opera company collected two honours at last week’s prestigious Laurence Olivier theatre awards.

Next week Electronic Arts will be debuting their newest addition to the Command & Conquer franchise to the public when they release their first single-player demo on Fileplanet. The exact day is, as of right now, not perfectly settled, but it will be next week. Could be Monday. Could be Friday. Either way you can start your anticipation engines. Lucky for us, EA agreed to let us have a go at an early build of the final demo to get a look at what will be included. We’ve had the chance to play it, take some screens, and enjoy the explosions.

The demo itself is a pretty solid amount of gameplay as far as demos go. Those of you that choose to download the thing will have the opportunity to play through one tutorial mission, two campaign missions, and one skirmish map on four difficulty settings. Depending on the difficulty you play the game at, it could take an hour or more to get through the tutorial and game missions. Skirmish adds quite a bit of life to the party as well. There’s only one map, but it’ll help you all get to know the game.

The tutorial and campaign missions follow the GDI faction. The tutorial doesn’t really have a story, it’s just training set in a yellow zone (craptastic, but livable, parts of the world). The tutorial will take players through the basics of movement and construction with some further instruction about GDI in particular in the prologue mission. The prologue is the first of the two campaign missions that begin the this latest chapter of the Tiberium Wars. As it stands, there has been a relative period of calm around the world Kane and Nod went silent. The first mission sends you, the player, to the North Carolina badlands, a yellow zone where some Nod activity has been detected. The introductory FMV starring Michael Ironside and Grace Park (Boomer from Battlestar Galactica) basically explains the premise in more detail and then you’re on your way. Upon arrival, it’s pretty clear that Nod’s not just playing around. Before too long, you’re in a small conflict with an advance base of Nod as you learn some of the more detailed points of the game. It’s a relatively easy mission that ends with a lovely bang and is followed up by another FMV scene that sets the tone for the rest of the game.

The second of the campaign missions is set in Alexandria Egypt, once again, a yellow zone. This particular area is serving as a major port for Nod’s activities and weapons shipments. Alexandria serves as one of the earlier missions for GDI and happens to be the first encounter where Mammoth Tanks rumble into the fight. There are several objectives in the mission, most of which call for a lot of large explosions and violence. There’s still a little bit of hand-holding in the mission but setting the difficulty to hard will create a much nicer challenge. The AI isn’t shy about sending large groups of enemies running screaming towards your base. It’s really a matter of making sure you have enough defense up and around to buy enough time to push out a few mammoth tanks. Once that happens, all bets are off for the enemy. Those mammoth tanks are brutally strong and can withstand a ton of punishment. This is a terrific map to see a lot of the awesome pyrotechnic displays that C&C 3 can push out. With all of the Mammoths, Orcas, and Zone Troopers (new heavy infantry with cool beans lasers) spewing death out around the map, it’s hard not to be entertained by the visuals.

The skirmish map included in the demo is called Small Town USA. You’ll be able to use the GDI in this mission and fight against NOD. It’s a two player skirmish map with four difficulty levels ranging from easy to brutal. Only one of the five AI personalities (Balanced AI) is included with the demo as well. You can expect to see rush, turtle, guerilla, and steamroller AI routines in the skirmish in the final product. The map takes place in one of the cleaner blue zones where tiberium hasn’t taken control so there are plenty of buildings to knock down in the process of stomping Nod. Each base begins at opposite corners of the map set straight from each other across a dense city area providing plenty of places for infantry to hide and ambush enemy troops. The other two corners of the map are taken by large plots of tiberium for expansion areas. Grabbing one of these early is necessary to claim victory. Four tiberium spikes that generate cash constantly can be captured by engineers or destroyed to keep the enemy from using them. The map is relatively small so combat begins quickly and will ramp up steadily until one side can finally get the upper hand in technology or tactics.

This is actually a map we’ve played before in one of the multiplayer sessions down at EA, but playing against the AI was a different matter. Hard is pretty damn hard. Granted, we’re still pretty new at the game, but hard presented quite the challenge. The computer is quick to get resources gathered and good about using them efficiently to create powerful strike groups out of smaller units. Either way, those hoping for a challenge to prepare for online matches may find the AI here adequate for researching build orders and techniques for GDI. Unfortunately, the replay function found in the final version of the game isn’t included in the demo so there’ll be a bit of guesswork as to how the AI manages to operate so quickly.

In any case, you can expect to see this demo hit sometime next week. Our guess is that it will be earlier rather than later, but you never know. So take a look at the screens in the media section and look forward to downloading the demo at Fileplanet very soon!

His most famous work carried an anti-war message

The German author of the World War II novel Das Boot, made into an Oscar-nominated film, has died of heart failure at the age of 89. Lothar-Guenther Buchheim was also an art collector and set up the Museum der Phantasie (Museum of the Imagination) in Bernried, Bavaria, in 2001.

He based Das Boot on his experiences as a submarine officer during the war.

The acclaimed 1981 six-hour film adaptation was the most expensive movie in German history at the time.

The claustrophobic view of life on board a U-boat was edited into a cinema version, earning six Academy Award nominations, including for film-maker Wolfgang Petersen’s direction and adapted screenplay.

Buchheim’s wartime experiences were the basis of several other fiction and non-fiction works, while he also wrote books on art.

“As an artist, author and art collector, Buchheim spent his entire life using his immense creativity and multifaceted passion for art,” said Bavaria governor Edmund Stoiber.

Buchheim was born in the eastern German city of Weimar in 1918. He is survived by a wife and two children.

Looking really good.

I’m … me and i’m here to provide you with fun stuff. I go delirious some times, but i enjoy writing, sometimes i will be in bad mood, so i won’t be porting anything at all, but sometimes i will be thrilled and happy by the blue sky outside, and i will be showing it to anyone around. It’s me.

23 years, 6 months, 0 weeks, 6 days, 2 hours, 9 minutes and 0 seconds

 

 

 

Australia is a key member in the US-led coalition in Iraq

US Vice-President Dick Cheney has renewed a warning that the use of force could be an option if Iran continues to defy the West over uranium enrichment. Mr Cheney, speaking in Australia, said diplomacy was the preferred course.

But in a newspaper interview he backed US Senator John McCain’s view that the only thing worse than a military clash would be an Iran with nuclear arms.

Iran insists that its nuclear programme is for peaceful purposes only.

Mr Cheney, a noted hawk in the Bush administration, endorsed Mr McCain’s stance in an interview with The Australian daily newspaper.

The Iranian people are vigilant and will defend all their rights to the end Mahmoud Ahmadinejad Iranian President Your say: Dealing with Iran Quick guide: Iran nuclear row Tension over Iran’s plans

And speaking at a joint news conference with Australian Prime Minister John Howard, he also spoke of US concerns about Tehran’s nuclear ambitions and warned that “all options are on the table” in terms of how the US would respond.

“They have made some fairly inflammatory statements,” he said. “They appear to be pursuing the development of nuclear weapons.”

Mr Cheney spoke of concern at Iran’s “fairly aggressive” role in the Middle East, and its flouting of a UN deadline to stop uranium enrichment.

Permanent UN Security Council members and Germany will meet on Monday to discuss further sanctions against Iran following its decision to ignore last Thursday’s deadline.

Resistance vow

On Friday, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said Iran will defend its nuclear programme to the end, and must not show weakness “in front of the enemy”.

“The Iranian people are vigilant and will defend all their rights to the end,” Iranian news agency Isna quoted Mr Ahmadinejad as saying, at a rally in northern Iran.

POSSIBLE NEXT STEPS New UN resolution on tougher economic sanctions, tabled by US or European allies US pressure on Europeans to step up bilateral sanctions New initiative to get Iran back to talks Q&A: Iran and nuclear issue

“If we show weakness in front of the enemy the expectations will increase but if we stand against them, because of this resistance they will retreat.”

The IAEA concluded in a report on Thursday that Iran was expanding rather than halting its enrichment programme, defying a UN resolution of December 2006.

Iran says the UN call for it to stop uranium enrichment is unacceptable as it has no legal basis.

Tehran denies Western claims it is secretly trying to build nuclear arms, saying its nuclear programme is for purely peaceful, energy-producing purposes.

While enriched uranium is used as fuel for nuclear reactors, highly enriched uranium can also be used to make nuclear bombs.

Australia is a key member of the US-led coalition in Iraq, with about 1,400 troops in and around the country.

Speaking after his meeting with Mr Cheney, Mr Howard warned of the possibility of Iran’s influence in the Middle East region growing if coalition troops are pulled out of Iraq too soon.

He told reporters that instability in Iraq resulting from an early coalition withdrawal could tip the regional power balance in Iran’s favour, with disastrous consequences:

“I think Iran would benefit enormously from that and that would be to many in the Middle East, not just the Israelis, that would be a nightmare scenario.”

Sure, there’s already a way to beam high-definition content onto your TV if you keep all of your media stored on your iPod, but for whimsical shooters that wield their cameraphone or IrSS-enabled digital camera most of the time, Sharp’s kicking out a bantam liaison just for you. Designed to ideally operate with high-speed infrared devices, the HN-IR1 enables cellphones and other IrSS gizmos to transmit high-quality photos wirelessly, where it’s then channeled onto your set at resolutions up to 1,920 x 1080. Of course, it’ll automatically downscale if you aren’t plugged into an HDTV, and interestingly enough, it purportedly interfaces with a few of Sharp’s AQUOS HD recorders in order to burn your photos to HDD / DVD. The wee device checks in at just 3.1- x 2.8- x 1.1-inches, handles photos up to eight-megapixels, and boasts a maximum transmission rate of 4Mbps, and while no exhaustive list of compatible devices was noted, a good deal of NTT DoCoMo handsets should fit the bill. So if you never seem to have time to transfer your photos over to entertain the family with a big screen slideshow, those in Japan can snag the HN-IR1 in late April for Â¥14,000 ($116).

1582: The Gregorian calendar is decreed in a papal bull by its namesake, Pope Gregory XIII.

The Gregorian calendar was devised by Italian doctor and chronologist Aloysius Lilius, primarily as a way of getting the various churches to agree on a formula for determining when Easter should fall. It also approximates a tropical year, the time it takes for the Earth to complete a full orbit around the sun.

The day is the basic unit of time, and 365 of them comprise a “common” year by the Gregorian computation. “Leap” years, consisting of 366 days, are blended in so that the calendar, based on a mathematical formula, will completely repeat itself every 400 years. The Gregorian calendar is divided into 12 months.

Adoption of the calendar, which replaced the older lunar and Julian calendars, was a drawn-out affair. While most Catholic countries switched over within the year, the non-Catholic world was reluctant to bow to Rome. The Protestant German lands didn’t adopt the Gregorian calendar until 1700. And it took 170 years, until 1752, before the British Empire finally caved, which led to some pretty messy bookkeeping.

The modern world, with the exception of some Orthodox churches that continue observing Easter according to the Julian calendar, has fallen into line behind Pope Gregory XIII.

Having failed in its attempt to buy the ‘micronation’ of Sealand, the group behind file-sharing website The Pirate Bay has decided to stay put in Sweden.

The Local spoke to Tobias Andersson, one of the Pirate Bay’s six Stockholm-based operators, to catch up with the latest developments from the web organisation that is the scourge of Hollywood and the music recording industry.
The Pirate Bay began life in early 2004. Bit torrent file-sharing technology was still in its infancy but growing fast. Two years later, in the summer of 2006, the organisation suffered a temporary setback when Swedish police raided the site’s servers.

“We moved to Holland right after the raid,” said Andersson.

After a short period in Dutch exile, however, the site was relaunched in Sweden. With its servers now more spread out, The Pirate Bay has become less vulnerable to police operations.

“It became obvious that some raids ain’t going to stop us. The site is based in Stockholm and we are here to stay,” he said.

The raid is going to court this summer but Andersson is not particularly worried about the consequences.

“It is uncertain what will happen there but one thing is for sure: it is likely to drag on for quite a long time,” he said.

Because of The Pirate Bay, Sweden has gained something of a reputation for internet piracy. Earlier this week it emerged that an elite corps of Swedish police has been trained to combat Internet piracy by the FBI and American lobbying organisation the Motion Picture Association.

But Andersson is insistent that Sealand and Plan B are not connected to any desire to flee from the authorities.

“We have 20,000 to 25,000 dollars to spend and we are looking at some alternatives. Really we just want somewhere we can name The Pirate Bay, so we can look on Google Maps and find ourselves there.

“It would be pretty cool and would serve as a memorial of what we have accomplished,” he said.

So no plans to pack up the servers and move them to a distant island haven?

“No. Although actually there was an internet connection on Sealand. But it would have been difficult to get the capacity we needed.

“We are happy to stay in Sweden since we are all from here,” said Andersson.

The Pirate Bay generated huge international publicity in January when it announced its intentions to bid for Sealand, a British naval platform in the North Sea settled in 1967 by an English major, Paddy Roy Bates. Bates proclaimed Sealand a state, issuing passports and gold and silver Sealand dollars and declaring himself Prince Roy.

“We have given that up now. We e-mailed them initially to see if they were interested and they didn’t know who we were.

“Then journalists began calling them and the Sealand people finally came out and said that they were opposed to internet piracy.

“The funny thing is, they ran a pirate radio station in the eighties. We tried to tell them that what we were doing was just a modern version of pirate radio,” said Andersson.

But Sealand stopped answering their e-mails and Andersson thinks he knows why.

“One of the Sealand people has written a book that is going to be turned into a Hollywood movie. A deal with us could have jeopardised that arrangement,” he said.

Indeed, the current ‘regent’ of Sealand, ‘Prince Michael’, told Canada’s CBC that The Pirate Bay was involved in “the theft of proprietary rights.”

“It doesn’t suit us at all,” he said of the Swedes’ offer.

Prior to their recent attempts at nation-building, The Pirate Bay people spent much of their time responding to letters from large multinationals demanding that they cease and desist.

“In the beginning we got a lot of threats, which we replied to officially on the website.

“We embarrassed and ridiculed these large companies and now they have stopped sending us letters,” said Andersson.

But The Pirate Bay itself is no minnow. The Alexa traffic ranking website puts The Pirate Bay just outside the top 300 in the world.

“It is the biggest site in the Nordic countries. We are quite a bit bigger than Aftonbladet newspaper, for example,” said Andersson.

Since the site carries advertising, one would think that the six Swedes could turn over a tidy profit. Newspaper Svenska Dagbladet alleged last year that the organisation’s advertising revenue far exceeds its operating costs. Not so, says The Pirate Bay.

“We’re pretty bad at making money. All these services are run by a company that takes about half of the revenue. I still work full time as an electrician,” said Andersson.

Aged between 21 and 29, Andersson says that those who run the site do so “mainly because it’s fun”.

“And then there is the copyright debate, of course. It is important that these questions are raised,” he said.

Microsoft, Electronic Arts and Warner Bros, to name but a few, have made no secret of the fact that they would prefer the questions to be raised elsewhere.

Great video, great moves, great actor.