| Memories
of the 1950’s and 60’s are back
Cruise-Holmes wedding revives Rome's Dolce
Vita |
| ROME La
Dolce Vita is back |
agencies
Rome
basked in Hollywood glamour on Friday as paparazzi
gave chase to Tom Cruise and his bride-to-be
Katie Holmes, along with a jetload of celebrity
guests, ahead of their wedding on Saturday in
a lakeside town north of the Italian capital.
"
La Dolce Vita returns to the Tiber" and "Hollywood
decamps to Rome" read Italian newspaper
headlines, reviving memories of the 1950s and
'60s when the Eternal City teemed with film stars.
A medieval castle in the lakeside town of Bracciano,
40 km (25 miles) north of Rome, has been tipped
as the venue for Saturday's wedding, although
seasoned showbusiness watchers do not rule
out a last-minute change of plan to outwit
the media.
"
I just came to have a good time in Italy," American
movie star Will Smith said after landing in Rome
on Friday.
Footballer David Beckham and his pop star
wife Victoria arrived a few hours later,
and John
Travolta, who shares Cruise's Scientologist
faith, was also expected.
Jim Carrey, Jennifer Lopez, Jada Pinkett
Smith, Brooke Shields and "Mission: Impossible
III" director J.J. Abrams are among the
guests already in the city for the nuptials.
Russell Crowe and Steven Spielberg are also said
to have been invited.
Shields, who last year had a public spat
with Cruise when he criticized her for taking
medication
to treat post-partum depression, braved waiting
photographers for a stroll around the Spanish
Steps.
BESIEGED BY PAPARAZZI
The wedding will be a Scientology ceremony
as twice-divorced Cruise, an ardent follower
of
the church founded by science-fiction writer
L. Ron Hubbard, cannot marry with a Catholic
rite. Holmes was raised a Roman Catholic.
Local authorities said this week Cruise,
star of Hollywood hits like "Top Gun" and
the "Mission: Impossible" trilogy,
has not sought permission for a civil service
either, meaning the wedding could be purely ceremonial
and have no legal value.
Church of Scientology weddings are similar
to Christian ones with rings, music, and
flowers. The bride wears white and the groom
a dark
suit.
The ceremony often includes a reminder to
the groom to provide the bride with "clothes
and food and tender happiness and frills, a pan,
a comb, perhaps a cat".
Details of the event, whose price tag is
estimated at 2 million euros, have been shrouded
in secrecy.
The pair will be dressed in outfits designed
by Giorgio Armani and local media reported
that they will give their guests towels embroidered
with their own initials.
Cruise, 44, and Holmes, 27, have a baby daughter,
Suri, who was born in April. Cruise also
has two older children adopted during his
marriage
to Nicole Kidman.
After spending most of their stay in Rome
holed up in the luxurious Hassler hotel,
besieged
by the paparazzi, the couple threw a party
for some
130 guests at a central restaurant on Thursday,
waving and acknowledging throngs of cheering
fans.
People magazine reported that Kidman, who
re-married earlier this year, sent the pair
a wedding
present, wishing them "a lifetime of happiness together".
The normally sleepy town of Bracciano, already
full with journalists, was cashing in on
its moment in the spotlight. Paparazzi, named
after
the street photographer Paparazzo in Fellini's
1960 movie La Dolce Vita, swarmed in the
streets.
"
The wedding of the year in Bracciano" boasted
the town hall's website above a picture of the
smiling couple.
Owners of apartments overlooking the frescoed
Odescalchi castle, where director Martin
Scorsese married model and actress Isabella
Rossellini
in 1979, are renting their terraces to
photographers and TV crews for up to 100,000
euros.
Bracciano's mayor is charging reporters
1,000 euros ($1,279) for positions in
the town's
historic archives, which face the castle,
and 300 euros
to park a satellite truck.
HIGH-TECH FUELS INFLUENCE
Manners aside, Northern Virginia's political
influence will only increase as the booming
high-tech economy continues to attract highly
educated,
Democratic-voting residents from across the
country, said University of Virginia politics
professor
Larry Sabato.
"
The northern part of the state is a Middle Atlantic
state, the southern part of the state still belongs
to the South," Sabato said. "Virginia
... is only going to become more Middle Atlantic."
Even in the heart of Allen country, residents
don't always agree on hot-button social
issues. Schoolteacher April Detamore, 36,
said she
voted for Allen because she opposed gay
marriage.
"
I'm a traditional conservative," she said
as her husband gassed up their Chevy Trailblazer. "It
was a difficult issue to try to explain to my
children."
At a saloon down the street, Hall and
fellow airplane mechanic Jon Marshall,
35, said
they thought that government should stay
out of
the lives of gay people, though they
both voted for
Allen as well.
"
I don't think that should have been a campaign
issue," Marshall said. "Who's to say
that a ban on interracial marriage isn't next?"
Like many Southern states, Virginia
outlawed interracial marriage until
the 1960s
and parts of the state shut down their
public
schools
during that period rather than integrate
them between
blacks and whites.
Race relations have improved since
then and in 1989 Virginia became the
first
U.S. state
to
elect a black governor, Democrat Douglas
Wilder.
Rockingham County and other areas of
the Shenandoah Valley remain overwhelmingly
white but Northern
Virginia's booming economy has drawn
a
flood of immigrants from Latin America
and Asia.
That's not necessarily a good thing
for Alexandria caterer Jodi Carr, 31,
who
said the prevalence
of illegal immigrants might force her
to move from Northern Virginia to a
more distant
suburb.
Though Republicans made a crackdown
on illegal immigration a centerpiece
of
their agenda
this year, Carr said she voted for
Webb because she was fed up with the
war in
Iraq.
"
I just am very sick of the Bush administration
and Allen's support of it," said Carr, a
registered Republican who used to work for Arizona
Sen. John McCain.
The Iraq war also was the most important
issue for Miller, a Democrat who
moved to the Northern
Virginia area two years ago.
"
I would have voted against any Republican right
now," Miller said. "It's like they're
all hiding out under Bush."
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| Rich
and poor countries are split |
| U.N. climate
talks gridlocked on Kyoto, Russia |
agencies
U.N.
talks on fighting climate change were gridlocked
on their final day on Friday as organizers faced
criticism of scant progress in aiding Africa
and slowing global warming.
Rich and poor countries are split at the 189-nation
talks about how to extend the U.N.'s Kyoto Protocol,
the main U.N. plan for fighting global warming,
beyond 2012 to help avert climate change that
could batter the world economy.
After two weeks of meetings, about 70 environment
ministers have agreed on some new ways to help
Africa but are deadlocked on two issues -- a
review of how effectively Kyoto is working and
a proposal by Russia to allow new nations to
sign up.
"
The two big issues are still open," said
Yvo de Boer, the head of the U.N. Climate Secretariat.
The talks are likely to last into the early
hours of Saturday to try to set a clearer course
for
reviewing Kyoto, which obliges 35 industrial
nations to cut emissions, mainly from fossil
fuels, by 2012.
De Boer dismissed environmentalists' complaints
that the 6,000 bureaucrats at the talks had
achieved too little to help the poor amid U.N.
projections
of more droughts, heatwaves, famines and rising
seas.
"
I think the conference has made very significant
progress for developing countries," de Boer
said, pointing to incentives to promote clean
energy such as solar or wind power under a scheme
that could channel $100 billion to poor nations
by 2012.
He also said the talks had set principles
for a fund meant to help developing nations
adapt
to climate change. The fund is expected to
grow sharply but is now worth just $3 million
-- less
than the $4 million cost of staging the Nairobi
talks.
CLIMATE INJUSTICE
"
Rich countries should have achieved more at this
conference and made more firm commitments to
combat climate injustice," said Sharon Looremeta,
a Kenyan Maasai leader of environmental group
Practical Action.
She said many of the delegates were treating
the meeting more as a holiday safari than
a forum to confront what U.N. Secretary-General
Kofi
Annan called an "all-encompassing threat" in
a speech to delegates on Wednesday.
Many backers of Kyoto see a planned review
of the Protocol working as a possible prelude
to
getting more countries involved after 2012
-- especially big emitters led by the United
States,
China and India.
But poorer states say the rich must continue
to take the lead and President George W.
Bush says he has no plans to rejoin Kyoto
-- a scheme
he views as an economic straitjacket.
A draft proposal by the chair of the meeting
on Friday said commitments under Kyoto, obliging
rich nations to cut emissions to 5 percent
below 1990 levels by 2012, "are not adequate" to
fight climate change and proposes a full review
in 2008.
Kyoto nations account for just 30 percent
of emissions of greenhouse gases and want
a more
global deal. Russia is proposing a new
mechanism to allow countries outside Kyoto
to volunteer
to cut their emissions.
Some backers of Kyoto fear that Moscow
is mainly seeking to help former communist
states
to
win big credits under Kyoto since their
emissions have fallen sharply from 1990
with the collapse
of the Soviet Union.
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