The Hobbit: Richard Armitage Talks Preparations For Playing Thorin Oakenshield

British actor Richard Armitage admitted it wasn’t a walk in the park to play a J.R.R. Tolkien character in Peter Jackson’s reimagining of “The Hobbit,” the first installment of which is on its way into theaters.

Upon touching down in New Zealand, where the trilogy was shot, the cast had a lot of character preparation to do.

PLAY IT NOW: Martin Freeman Discusses The Hobbit’s ‘Good Chemistry’ & Playing Bilbo Baggins

“We arrived in February 2011 and we went straight into a training program, which was called ‘Dwarf Bootcamp,’ which was literally boots — these huge boots. We learned how to walk, we wrestled with each other, we did archery together, we did sword fighting, hammer fighting, horse riding — everything you could possibly think of,” Richard, who plays Thorin Oakenshield in the film told Access Hollywood at the film’s junket.

In addition, the cast, which includes his former “Cold Feet” co-star James Nesbitt as Bofur, found ways to get to know each other better off set.

VIEW THE PHOTOS: The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey — New York City Premiere

“We went round to each other’s houses and we cooked food together, we went to the pub and got drunk together, so there was an incredibly great bonding time between the dwarves,” he said.

Richard had plenty of experience sword fighting and horse riding in the BBC America series “Robin Hood,” but it was something else that came in handy during the long days on set.

“I’d done a number of shows where I’d had to use sword fighting and I’d also done horse riding. I’d also pulled guns out of my pocket. That was less useful,” he laughed, likely referring to his recent role in the PBS-import series “MI-5,” where he played a British spy. “But, yeah, you draw on everything. I’d worked at the Royal Shakespeare Company, so the vocal work was really useful to kind of pull that from there. I’d worked in a circus, there were… all sorts of things that were really useful, but the one thing that I do have — for lack of talent — is stamina and that’s the one thing I think everybody needed on this job.”

VIEW THE PHOTOS: Meet ‘The Hobbit’ Cast!

An imagination was useful also, but Richard said what turned out on the big screen was still wilder – and more beautiful – than he dreamed of.

“So many moments… Actually, apart from the eagles — which every single time I’ve seen this film absolutely blows my mind and I can barely keep the tears back and [it has] nothing to do with the pathos of the scene, just that feeling of flight moves me — is the throne of Aragorn, in the beginning of the prologue,” he told Access of the moment that moved him most. “When it got to [filming] that scene, I walked on and… it was just a green cross on the floor with a tiny green chair… [But in the film], they just made this incredible, almost space aged, sort of suspended seat in the middle of this stalagmite. It just blows my mind when I see that.”

VIEW THE PHOTOS: The Brit Pack: Hot Shots Of Stars From The UK!

“The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey” hits theaters on December 14, 2012, followed by “The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug,” on December 13, 2013 and “The Hobbit: There and Back Again,” on July 18, 2014.

– Jolie Lash

Copyright 2012 by NBC Universal, Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

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New Flickr iPhone app to compete with Instagram and Twitter with 16 filters

Hot on the heels of its email redesign, Yahoo (YHOO) announced on Wednesday that it has completely redesigned the Flickr iPhone app. The new app borrows heavily from Instagram and focuses on what makes Flickr special: photos and communities. Yahoo’s new Flickr app also includes 16 filters with their own fancy names to go head-on with Instagram and Twitter’s recently updated app that added eight filters. Users can now access the Flickr app with numerous accounts including Facebook (FB) and Google (GOOG) and photos can be shared to Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr or via email. The new Flickr app is available for free on iPhone but to our disappointment, there isn’t an iPad-optimized version.

Ellis Hamburger from The Verge penned an interesting editorial on how Twitter misses the mark by simply adding filters to its app without having the close community that makes Instagram so addictive. Led by CEO Marissa Mayer, Yahoo seems aware that mobile apps thrive on the communities that sprout up. The new Flickr app’s emphasis on how the images are displayed and shared in visually appealing and digestible thumbnails suggests Yahoo finally understands mobile.

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Music, comedy strike defiant tone at Sandy concert

NEW YORK (AP) — Music and comedy royalty struck a defiant tone in a benefit concert for Superstorm Sandy victims on Wednesday, asking for help to rebuild a New York metropolitan area most of them know well.

The sold-out Madison Square Garden show was televised, streamed online and aired on radio all over the world. Producers said up to 2 billion people could experience the concert live.

“When are you going to learn,” comic and New Jersey native Jon Stewart said. “You can throw anything at us — terrorists, hurricanes. You can take away our giant sodas. It doesn’t matter. We’re coming back stronger every time.”

Jersey shore hero Bruce Springsteen set a roaring tone, opening the concert with “Land of Hope and Dreams” and “Wrecking Ball.” He addressed the rebuilding process in introducing his song “My City of Ruins,” noting it was written about the decline of Asbury Park, N.J. before that city’s renaissance over the past decade. What made the Jersey shore special was its inclusiveness, a place where people of all incomes and backgrounds could find a place, he said.

“I pray that that characteristic remains along the Jersey shore because that’s what makes it special,” Springsteen said.

He mixed a verse of Tom Waits’ “Jersey Girl” into the song before calling New Jersey neighbor Jon Bon Jovi to join him in a rousing “Born to Run.” Springsteen later returned the favor by joining Bon Jovi on “Who Says You Can’t Go Home.”

Adam Sandler hearkened back to his “Saturday Night Live” days with a ribald rewrite of the oft-sung “Hallelujah” that composer Leonard Cohen never would have dreamed. The rewritten chorus says, “Sandy, screw ya, we’ll get through ya, because we’re New Yawkers.

Sandler wore a New York Jets T-shirt and mined Donald Trump, Michael Bloomberg, the New York Knicks, Times Square porn and Jets quarterback Mark Sanchez for laugh lines.

The music lineup was heavily weighted toward classic rock, which has the type of fans able to afford a show for which ticket prices ranged from $ 150 to $ 2,500. Even with those prices, people with tickets have been offering them for more on broker sites such as StubHub, an attempt at profiteering that producers fumed was “despicable.”

“This has got to be the largest collection of old English musicians ever assembled in Madison Square Garden,” Rolling Stones rocker Mick Jagger said. “If it rains in London, you’ve got to come and help us.”

In fighting trim for a series of 50th anniversary concerts in the New York area, the Stones ripped through “You’ve Got Me Rockin’” and “Jumping Jack Flash.

Jagger wasn’t in New York City for Sandy, but he said in an interview before the concert that his apartment was flooded with 2 feet of water.

Eric Clapton switched from acoustic to electric guitar and sang “Nobody Knows You When You’re Down and Out” and “Crossroads.” New York was a backdrop for Clapton’s personal tragedy, when his young son died after falling out of a window.

Roger Waters played a set of Pink Floyd’s spacey rock, joined by Eddie Vedder for “Comfortably Numb.” Waters stuck to the music and left the fundraising to others.

“Can’t chat,” he said, “because we only have 30 minutes.”

The sold-out “12-12-12″ concert was being shown on 37 television stations in the United States and more than 200 others worldwide. It was to be streamed on 30 websites, including YouTube and Yahoo, and played on radio stations. Theaters, including 27 in the New York region and dozens more elsewhere, were showing it live.

Proceeds from the show will be distributed through the Robin Hood Foundation. More than $ 30 million was raised through ticket sales alone.

The powerful storm left parts of New York City underwater and left millions of people in several states without heat or electricity for weeks. It’s blamed for at least 125 deaths, including 104 in New York and New Jersey, and it destroyed or damaged 305,000 housing units in New York alone.

Other concert performers were to include Long Islander Billy Joel (“New York State of Mind”) and New Yorker Alicia Keys (“Empire State of Mind”). Even Liverpool’s Paul McCartney has a New York office, Hamptons home and a wife, Nancy Shevell, who spent a decade on the board of the agency that runs New York‘s public transit system.

E Street Band guitarist Steve Van Zandt said backstage that musicians are often quick to help when they can.

“Yes, it’s more personal because literally the Jersey shore is where we grew up,” he said. “But we’d be here anyway.”

The concert came a day after the death of sitar master Ravi Shankar, a performer at the 1971 “Concert for Bangladesh” considered the grandfather of music benefits. That concert also was in Madison Square Garden.

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AP Music Writer Mesfin Fekadu in New York contributed to this report.

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Lilly likens Alzheimer’s race to 1920s insulin quest

(Reuters) – Drugmaker Eli Lilly & Co is confident it will do for Alzheimer’s patients what it did almost a century ago for diabetics – find a breakthrough treatment, even though skeptics say it could take years.

“We are on the cusp here of writing medical history again as a company, this time in Alzheimer’s disease,” Jan Lundberg, Lilly’s research chief, said in an interview.

Just as the Indianapolis-based company made history in the 1920s by producing the first insulin when type 1 diabetes was a virtual death sentence, Lundberg said he is optimistic that the drugs Lilly is currently testing could significantly slow the ultimately fatal memory-robbing disease.

“It is no longer a question of ‘if’ we will get a successful medicine for this devastating disease on the market, but when,” said Lundberg, 59.

To be sure, companies often tout drugs in the pipeline that never make it to market. Lundberg’s degree of confidence is striking given that Lilly’s most closely watched experimental drug – solanezumab – failed two big late-stage studies earlier this year. Analysts said the drug still has a slight chance of approval because it delayed memory loss in Alzheimer’s patients with mild symptoms – something no other drug has ever done.

Lilly desperately needs new big-selling medicines to replace lost sales of several of its biggest products that now face competition from cheaper generics. A successful Alzheimer’s drug could bring in billions of dollars each year.

An estimated 5 million people in the United States have Alzheimer’s, the biggest cause of dementia. More than 35 million people worldwide are believed to have dementia, including Alzheimer’s disease, and those numbers are expected to rise as more countries see lifespans increase. But truly effective treatments have eluded researchers.

“Alzheimer’s is fatal, ultimately with no survivors, so we are in desperate need for an effective therapy,” said Dr. Ronald Petersen, director of the Alzheimer’s Disease Research Center at the Mayo Clinic. “Is Lilly poised to make that contribution? I don’t know. But they are pursuing very good options.”

Petersen said Alzheimer’s may be more complex than diabetes, and thus harder to make quick strides against, as Lilly did with insulin. “There may not be a silver bullet. We’ve had so many failures of Alzheimer’s drugs, so we don’t want to be inappropriately optimistic.”

THE WAIT FOR APPROVAL

And even as Wall Street looks for an Alzheimer’s treatment that will deliver blockbuster revenues, many remain cautious.

“Lilly is one of the leaders, but this is going to take a lot longer than we all want it to,” said Cowen and Co analyst Steve Scala. “I doubt a drug will have a meaningful impact on the course of the disease for the next five years.”

Lilly also faces competition from other drugmakers like Merck & Co and Roche Holding AG that have promising Alzheimer’s compounds that could reap annual sales in the billions of dollars.

Lilly is ahead of other drugmakers in Alzheimer’s research after solanezumab, in Phase III trials, was shown in August to slow cognitive declines in patients with mild symptoms of the disease. But the drug, given by intravenous infusion, failed its overall goal of delaying cognitive and physical decline in the larger group of patients with mild-to-moderate Alzheimer’s.

Industry analysts said Lilly might ask the U.S. Food and Drug Administration to approve solanezumab only for patients with mild Alzheimer’s. But the FDA would likely require new trials for that narrower population of patients with mild disease, analysts said.

Leerink Swann analyst Seamus Fernandez said a new trial would likely take three years, but that solanezumab could generate annual sales of up to $ 7 billion if approved and become Lilly’s biggest source of earnings growth.

Lundberg, who joined Lilly in early 2010 after heading research for a decade at British drugmaker AstraZeneca, would not say whether Lilly would seek approval of solanezumab, based on already completed trials.

Lundberg noted that test results were mixed for solanezumab. “What we saw was a slowing of cognitive decline — the memory problem — while the activities of daily living were much less affected.”

But he said solanezumab’s results were impressive nonetheless, especially compared with a similar drug from Pfizer Inc, called bapineuzumab, that failed in large closely watched trials over the summer. Both drugs target toxic plaques in the brain made of a protein called amyloid.

“We have an agent that was safer and also showed a statistically significant benefit” against mild Alzheimer’s, he said.

A MULTI-BILLION-DOLLAR OPPORTUNITY

Some researchers believe far earlier use of solanezumab, and other drugs that target amyloid, could prevent symptoms of the disease. One such prevention study will begin next year at Washington University in St. Louis, and includes use of solanezumab.

Lundberg was cautiously optimistic about Lilly’s mid-stage trials of a different oral class of Alzheimer’s drugs called beta secretase inhibitors — or BACE inhibitors — which work by blocking production of amyloid.

In small earlier trials, Lilly’s experimental drug cut levels of amyloid beta in cerebrospinal fluid by 60 percent. A similar drug from Merck & Co lowered levels by about 90 percent in a separate Phase 1 trial. Each company claims to be ahead of the other in the potentially lucrative race to develop the first approved BACE inhibitor.

Excitement about the class of drugs intensified in July, when researchers in Iceland identified a mutation in a gene that slows the body’s production of beta secretase, Lundberg said. Those aged 85 and older with the beneficial mutation were 81 percent less likely to develop Alzheimer’s than others in that age group.

Lilly and Merck are expected to complete their mid-stage trials by early 2014, and show whether their BACE inhibitors are safe.

“This category could be enormous,” said Leerink Swann’s Fernandez, estimating that a successful drug could capture as much revenue – $ 10 billion – annually as some of the most successful cholesterol drugs.

“We’re looking at multi-billion opportunities because of desperation and the cost of treating this disease,” he said.

(Reporting By Ransdell Pierson in New York; Editing by Jilian Mincer and Leslie Adler)

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Asia stocks gain, unfazed by NKorea rocket launch

BANGKOK (AP) — Asian stock markets rose Wednesday as a German business confidence survey alleviated concerns that Europe’s largest economy might fall into recession. Investors brushed off North Korea‘s latest test launch of a long-range rocket.

The ZEW indicator of economic sentiment defied expectations by rising to plus 6.9 points, from minus 15.7 in November. Markets had expected the index to remain mired in negative numbers. Germany’s economy grew a modest 0.2 percent in the third quarter and expectations are for another weak quarter in the last three months of the year.

Wolfgang Franz, head of the ZEW, or Centre for European Economic Research, said Tuesday the survey showed that Germany isn’t facing recession unless the debt crisis afflicting euro countries reignites.

Japan protested North Korea’s launch of a rocket and was convening its security council to analyze the situation. Rocket tests are seen as crucial to advancing North Korea’s nuclear weapons ambitions. Officials in Washington, Seoul, Tokyo and elsewhere have been urging North Korea to cancel the liftoff.

Despite the launch, Japan’s Nikkei 225 index rose 0.5 percent to 9,570.08. Hong Kong’s Hang Seng added 0.6 percent to 22,446.36. South Korea’s Kospi gained 0.2 percent to 1,969.26. Australia’s S&P/ASX 200 added 0.3 percent to 4,592.40.

Among individual stocks, shares of Australian mining giant BHP Billiton rose 1.2 percent after the company announced it has agreed to sell its stake in a proposed Australian gas project to Chinese state-owned energy producer PetroChina for $ 1.6 billion.

Traders also are watching the U.S. Federal Reserve, which began a two-day policy meeting Tuesday. Some economists expect the Fed to Wednesday announce a new bond-buying program, or quantitative easing, to boost the economy.

Wall Street Tuesday as investors hoped U.S. leaders would eventually thrash out a budget deal needed to keep a slew of tax increases and spending cuts from hitting the world’s largest economy. The longer a U.S. deal fails to emerge to avoid the so-called “fiscal cliff” of automatic tax increases and spending cuts at the start of next year, the more fidgety investors are likely to become.

The Dow Jones industrial average rose 0.6 percent to 13,248.44. The S&P 500 gained 0.7 percent to 1,427.84. The Nasdaq composite index rose 1.2 percent to 3,022.30

Benchmark crude for January delivery was up 19 cents to $ 85.98 per barrel in electronic trading on the New York Mercantile Exchange. The contract rose 23 cents to close at $ 85.79 per barrel on the Nymex on Tuesday.

In currencies, the euro rose to $ 1.3009 from $ 1.3003 late Tuesday in New York. The dollar rose to 82.55 yen from 82.50 yen.

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Follow Pamela Sampson on Twitter at http://twitter.com/pamelasampson

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Corruption probe shrouds Quebec in new darkness

MONTREAL (Reuters) – Half a century ago, a new crop of Quebec leaders sparked the so-called Quiet Revolution to eradicate the “Great Darkness” – decades of corruption that kept Canada‘s French-speaking province under the dominance of one party and the Catholic church.

The revolution’s reforms, including cleaning up the way lawmakers were elected and secularizing the education system, seemed to work, paving the way for decades of growth, progress and prominence as Canada emerged as a model of democracy.

Fifty years later, a public inquiry into corruption and government bid-rigging suggests the province’s politics are not as clean as Quebecers had hoped or believed.

Since May, when the inquiry opened in Montreal, Canadians have been getting daily doses of revelations of fraud through live broadcasts on French-language television stations. Corruption involving the Mafia, construction bosses and politicians, the inquiry has shown, drove up the average building cost of municipal contracts by more than 30 percent in Montreal, Canada’s second-largest city.

Last month, Montreal Mayor Gerald Tremblay resigned as did the mayor of nearby Laval, Gilles Vaillancourt. Both denied doing anything wrong, but said they could not govern amid the accusations of corruption involving rigging of municipal contracts, kickbacks from the contracts and illegal financing of elections.

Tremblay has not been charged by police. Vaillancourt’s homes and offices have been raided several times by Quebec’s anti-corruption squad, which operates independently of the inquiry, but no charges have been filed against him either. Police said the raids were part of an investigation but they would not release further details.

“Quebecers lived for several years under the impression that they had found the right formula, that their parties were clean,” said Pierre Martin, political science professor at the University of Montreal. Now, he said, “people at all levels are fed up.”

The inquiry must submit its final report to the Quebec government by next October. It has exposed practices worthy of a Hollywood noir thriller – a mob boss stuffing his socks with money, rigged construction contracts, call girls offered as gifts, and a party fundraiser with so much cash he could not close the door of his safe.

“Even though we are in the early days, what is emerging is a pretty troubling portrait of the way public contracts were awarded,” said Antonia Maioni, director of the McGill Institute for the Study of Canada in Montreal.

Quebec’s Liberals, the force behind the Quiet Revolution, launched the inquiry as rumors of corruption swirled. The government then called an election for September, a year ahead of schedule, in what was seen as an attempt to stop damaging testimony hurting its popularity.

The tactic did not help. Jean Charest’s Liberals lost to the Parti Quebecois, whose ultimate aim is to take the French-speaking province, the size of Western Europe, out of Canada.

‘IT WASN’T COMPLICATED’

According to allegations at the inquiry, the corruption helped three main entities: the construction bosses who colluded to bid on contracts, the Montreal Mafia dons who swooped in for their share, and the municipal politicians who received kickbacks to finance campaigns.

In Quebec, the Mafia has been dominated by the Rizzuto family, with tentacles to the rest of Canada and crime families in New York and abroad. But recently the syndicate has been facing challenges from other crime groups in Montreal, according to the Toronto-based Mafia analyst and author Antonio Nicaso.

The reputed godfather of the syndicate, Vito Rizzuto, has been subpoenaed to appear before the commission, but the date for his testimony has not been set.

The hearings have zeroed in on four construction bosses and how their companies worked with the Mafia, bribed municipal engineers and provided funds for mayoralty campaigns in Montreal, the business capital for Quebec’s 8 million people.

“It’s not good for the economy,” said Martin. “It’s not good for any kind of legitimate business that tries to enter into any kind of long-term relationship with the public sector.”

Quebec’s anti-corruption squad has arrested 35 people so far this year, staging well-publicized raids on mayoral offices and on construction and engineering companies. The squad has arrested civil servants and owners of construction companies, among others.

“I now must suffer an unbearable injustice,” Tremblay said in a somber resignation speech earlier this month after a decade as mayor of Montreal, saying he could not continue in office because the allegations of corruption were causing a paralysis at City Hall.

Some of the most explosive allegations at the inquiry, headed by Quebec Superior Court Justice France Charbonneau, came from Lino Zambito, owner of a now bankrupt construction company, and from a top worker for Tremblay’s political party, Union Montreal.

Zambito, who is seen as one of the smaller players and who also faces fraud charges, described a system of collusion between organized crime, business cartels and corrupt civil servants, with payments made according to a predetermined formula.

“The entrepreneurs made money, and there was an amount that was due to the Mafia,” Zambito told the inquiry. “It wasn’t complicated.”

Zambito said the Mafia got 2.5 percent of the value of a contract, 3 percent went to Union Montreal and 1 percent to the engineer tasked with inflating contract prices.

Tremblay did not respond to emails requesting comment on the allegations of corruption at city hall.

A former party organizer, Martin Dumont, alleged the mayor was aware of double bookkeeping used to hide illegal funding during a 2004 election.

Dumont said the mayor walked out of the room during a meeting that explained the double bookkeeping system, saying he did not want to know anything about it.

Dumont also described how he was called into the office of a fundraiser for Union Montreal to help close the door of a safe because it was too full of money.

“I think it was the largest amount I’d ever seen in my life,” Dumont said at the inquiry.

GOLF, HOCKEY, ESCORTS

The inquiry also saw videos linking construction company players with Mafia bosses. In one police surveillance video, a Mafia boss was seen stuffing cash into his socks.

A retired city of Montreal engineer, Gilles Surprenant, described how he first accepted a bribe in the late 1980s after being “intimidated” by a construction company owner. Over the years he said he accepted over $ 700,000 from the owners in return for inflating the price of the contracts.

Another retired engineer, Luc Leclerc, admitted to bagging half a million dollars for the same service. He said the system was well-known to many at city hall and simply part of the “business culture” in Montreal. He also got gifts and paid golf trips to the Caribbean with other businessmen and Mafia bosses.

Gilles Vezina, who is currently suspended from his job as a city engineer, concurred.

“It was part of our business relationships to get advantages like golf, hockey, Christmas gifts” from construction bosses, he told the inquiry in mid-November.

The gifts didn’t stop there. Vezina said he was twice offered the services of prostitutes from different construction bosses in the 1980s or early 1990s, which he said he refused.

The accusations are jarring for a country that prides itself on being one of the least corrupt places in the world, according to corruption watchdog Transparency International. But experts say corruption in Montreal was something of an open secret.

“The alarm signals have been going off here for 20 years and no one has done anything,” said Andre Cedilot, a former journalist who co-wrote a book on the Canadian Mafia.

Quebec’s new government has introduced legislation tasking the province’s securities regulator with vetting businesses vying for public contracts and allowing it to block companies that do not measure up.

Anti-corruption activist Jonathan Brun was not optimistic.

“You’ve got to use modern technology,” said Brun, a co-founder of Quebec Ouvert, a group that wants to make all information about contracts freely available rather than asking regulators to oversee individual companies. “You’ve got to change the entire system if you really want to fight corruption.”

(Writing by Russ Blinch; Editing by Janet Guttsman, Mary Milliken and Prudence Crowther)

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Facebook helps FBI bust cybercriminals blamed for $850 million losses

SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) – Investigators led by the Federal Bureau of Investigation and aided by Facebook Inc, have busted an international criminal ring that infected 11 million computers around the world and caused more than $ 850 million in total losses in one of the largest cybercrime hauls in history.

The FBI, working in concert with the world’s largest social network and several international law enforcement agencies, arrested 10 people it says infected computers with “Yahos” malicious software, then stole credit card, bank and other personal information.

Facebook’s security team assisted the FBI after “Yahos” targeted its users from 2010 to October 2012, the U.S. federal agency said in a statement on its website. The social network helped identify the criminals and spot affected accounts, it said.

Its “security systems were able to detect affected accounts and provide tools to remove these threats,” the FBI said.

According to the agency, which worked also with the U.S. Department of Justice, the accused hackers employed the “Butterfly Botnet”. Botnets are networks of compromised computers that can be used in a variety of cyberattacks on personal computers.

The FBI said it nabbed 10 people from Bosnia and Herzegovina, Croatia, Macedonia, New Zealand, Peru, the United Kingdom, and the United States, executed numerous search warrants and conducted a raft of interviews.

It estimated the total losses from their activities at more than $ 850 million, without elaborating.

Hard data is tough to come by, but experts say cybercrime is on the rise around the world as PC and mobile computing become more prevalent and as more and more financial transactions shift online, leaving law enforcement, cybersecurity professionals and targeted corporations increasingly hard-pressed to spot and ward off attacks.

(Reporting By Edwin Chan; Editing by Matt Driskill)

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Spice Girls take stage at musical premiere

LONDON (Reuters) – The Spice Girls took to the stage on Tuesday after the world premiere of a new musical loosely based on their meteoric rise to fame in the 1990s, earning huge cheers from an audience that only really got going at the encore.

“Viva Forever!” was the brainchild of producer Judy Craymer, whose “Mamma Mia!” musical based on the hits of ABBA has earned nearly $ 2 billion worldwide and spawned a hit movie starring Meryl Streep.

She teamed up with British comedian Jennifer Saunders to create a story about the central character Viva, a sprightly teenager who, along with her friends, gets into the final stages of a TV singing contest closely resembling “The X Factor”.

To boost flagging audience figures – a nod to “The X Factor”s real-life ratings woes in Britain this season – their “mentor” springs a surprise and throws out three members of the band to leave Viva on her own.

What follows is part morality tale examining what is more important – friends, family or fame – and part satire on reality television, including a callous, Simon Cowell-like producer.

“We love you Judy!” said Geri Halliwell at the end of the show, which closed with a romp through some of the Spice Girls‘ biggest hits including “Spice Up Your Life”.

“Thank you for making the Spice Girls‘ dream come true,” Halliwell added.

Halliwell was joined on stage by Victoria Beckham, Melanie Brown, Emma Bunton and Melanie Chisholm, who together stormed the charts in the 1990s and put “girl power” on the map.

Beckham, who arrived at the London premiere after her ex-bandmates, sat with her soccer star husband David and three sons, who clapped along to the music during the final medley.

NATIONAL TREASURES

Now all young mothers in their late 30s and early 40s, The Spice Girls are still affectionately known by the nicknames they adopted in the band – Posh (Beckham), Scary (Brown), Baby (Bunton), Sporty (Chisholm) and Ginger (Halliwell).

They were hailed as modern-day feminists by some and dismissed as vacuous pop princesses by others, but their success is beyond doubt. They sold 55 million records, had nine British No. 1 singles and three back-to-back Christmas No. 1s.

The band broke up around 12 years ago, and internal bickering among the members was long the delight of Britain’s celebrity-obsessed tabloids.

Perhaps surprisingly, given the bust-ups and hissy fits, the group has been united in its backing of the new musical, and underlining the Spice Girls‘ lasting popularity they played a major part in the closing ceremony at the London Olympics.

Paul Taylor, writing in the Independent newspaper, gave the musical two stars out of five in his review.

“The Spice Girls‘ songs, with their clever hooks and catchy rhythms, are better at projecting an attitude than fleshing out a dramatic situation,” he wrote, describing Saunders’ story as “charmless”, “messy” and “lackluster”.

“Not only does her script rarely give you that necessary gleeful sense of expectancy about where the songs are going to be shoe-horned in, but it’s embarrassingly derivative of ‘Mamma Mia!’ and looks way past its sell-by date in its utterly surprise-free satiric swipe at ‘X Factor’.”

Saunders said before the show that she considered herself the “sixth” Spice Girl.

“We used to travel around everywhere to see them and they were so great with my kids,” said the 54-year-old, best known for playing a self-absorbed, eccentric mother in the popular British comedy series “Absolutely Fabulous”.

“The thought of a Spice Girls musical written by somebody else was not acceptable,” she told the Daily Mirror newspaper. “Because I was so close to them, I couldn’t let it slip through my fingers.”

(Reporting by Mike Collett-White, editing by Jill Serjeant)

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Chavez faces cancer surgery in Cuba, vows he’ll be back

CARACAS (Reuters) – Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez flew to Cuba on Monday for cancer surgery, with a vow to return quickly despite conceding for the first time that the disease could end his 14-year rule of the South American OPEC nation.

“I leave full of hope. We are warriors, full of light and faith,” the ever-upbeat Chavez said before boarding the flight to Havana. “I hope to be back soon.”

Chavez, 58, pumped a fist in the air as he set off for the latest chapter of a tumultuous rule that has included a brief coup, persistent acrimony with the United States and frequent nationalizations, as well as wildly popular anti-poverty programs.

The socialist president first suffered an undisclosed form of cancer in the pelvic region in mid-2011. He had appeared to improve and easily won re-election in October but now faces a fourth round of surgery for a second cancer recurrence in the same area.

The news sparked a rally in Venezuela bonds on Monday, given many investors’ preference for more a business-friendly government in Caracas.

Chavez stunned Venezuelans over the weekend with his nationally televised announcement that more malignant cells had been found, despite twice having declared himself cured.

END OF AN ERA?

Chavez’s re-election in October was helped by heavy government spending on social programs and his intense emotional connection to followers who view him as a larger-than-life figure.

He is due to start a new six-year term on January 10.

His departure would mark the end of an era given his flamboyant leadership of Latin America’s hard left and self-appointed role as Washington’s main provocateur in the region.

Chavez has named Vice President and Foreign Minister Nicolas Maduro as his preferred successor, urging supporters to vote for Maduro in the event of an election. The constitution stipulates a vote within 30 days should he be incapacitated.

In his first appearance following his anointment, Maduro wept as he vowed the country would remain faithful to Chavez and carry on his self-styled revolution.

“We are going to accompany President Chavez in prayer and in action,” Maduro said at a campaign rally for state governors. “We’ve been with (him) in the good times and bad times.”

Allies including former Vice President Elias Jaua and Oil Minister Rafael Ramirez came forward with good wishes for the president. Ramirez read a statement from oil workers vowing unbending loyalty to Chavez and promising to support Maduro.

State media promoted a Twitter campaign for the president by splashing hashtags including #ElmundoestaconChavez (the world is with Chavez). By midday, it was one of the microblogging site’s top global trending topics.

The health saga has once again eclipsed major national issues such as state elections on Sunday, a widely expected devaluation of the bolivar currency and a proposed amnesty for Chavez’s jailed and exiled political foes.

If a new election were needed, the opposition could be in its best position to win since Chavez took power in 1999. Many voters have overlooked the government’s failings because of their deep emotional connection with the president.

But the opposition’s prospects may hinge on the result of the vote for Miranda state governor on Sunday. A loss there for Governor Henrique Capriles could fracture the coalition that backed him as a unity presidential candidate and spark a return to an era of infighting that benefited Chavez and his allies.

Capriles, 40, lost to Chavez in October but got 44 percent of the vote – a record 6.5 million votes for the opposition in the Chavez years.

Opposition leaders say Chavez’s condition is serious enough that he must officially step aside and temporarily designate the vice president to lead the country while he is in treatment.

Failure to do so, they say, could paralyze decision-making and lead to fighting within the ruling Socialist Party.

Chavez’s backing of Maduro was seen as a snub to Congress head Diosdado Cabello, who is widely considered Maduro’s rival despite their public statements to the contrary. Chavez pointedly called for unity and “no intrigue” before leaving.

The opposition also has criticized the secrecy surrounding the details of his medical condition and his snubbing of local doctors in favor of those in Cuba.

“Hiding information for partisan gain without regards for the good of the country is not democratic,” said Ramon Guillermo Aveledo, the leader of Venezuela’s Democratic Unity coalition.

Venezuela’s heavily traded global bonds rallied 2.81 percent in price, according to returns tallied by the J.P. Morgan Emerging Markets Bond Index Plus (EMBI+).

INTERNATIONAL IMPACT

Chavez’s health has major implications for the region.

A handful of Latin American and Caribbean neighbors – from Cuba and Nicaragua to Bolivia and Ecuador – have come to depend on his oil-fueled largesse to bolster their fragile economies. OPEC member Venezuela has the world’s largest oil reserves.

War-torn Syria, which is facing tightening sanctions by the United States and the European Union, has received much-needed shipments of diesel from the sympathetic Chavez government.

Despite Chavez’s selection of Maduro, his “Chavismo” movement could disintegrate without him given rumored rivalries among the main players. Goldman Sachs analyst Alberto Ramos warned in a research note of “a possibly noisy, and not necessarily short, political transition in Venezuela.”

Maduro, a 50-year-old former bus driver and union leader, is the most popular of the senior “Chavistas” among the president’s working-class supporters, thanks to his affable manner, humble background and close ties to Chavez.

His six years as foreign minister have also given him good contacts in countries such as China and Russia. He has an easygoing style but is a firm believer in Chavez’s leftist policies and has often led fierce criticism of the United States.

Supporters have been holding vigils for Chavez around the country, and even though he was absent on Monday, his image was everywhere on state media and in public squares.

Messages of support also have poured in from abroad, and Ecuadorean President Rafael Correa, a fellow socialist, joined Chavez in Cuba.

“We’ve come in solidarity,” Correa said. “He is a historic president, a great friend … and most of all an extraordinary human being. You are not alone in your struggle.”

For latest news, follow us on Twitter @ReutersVzla

(Additional reporting by Deisy Buitrago in Caracas, Walker Simon in New York, Sujata Rao in London, Nelson Acosta in Havana, Jack Kimball in Bogota; Editing by Kieran Murray and Xavier Briand)

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Egypt army given temporary power to arrest civilians

CAIRO (Reuters) – Egypt’s Islamist president has given the army temporary power to arrest civilians during a constitutional referendum he is determined to push through despite the risk of bloodshed between his supporters and opponents accusing him of a power grab.

Seven people were killed and hundreds wounded last week in clashes between the Islamist Muslim Brotherhood and their critics besieging Mohamed Mursi’s graffiti-daubed presidential palace. Both sides plan mass rallies on Tuesday.

The elite Republican Guard has yet to use force to keep protesters away from the palace, which it ringed with tanks, barbed wire and concrete barricades after last week’s violence.

Mursi, bruised by calls for his downfall, has rescinded a November 22 decree giving him wide powers but is going ahead with a referendum on Saturday on a constitution seen by his supporters as a triumph for democracy and by many liberals as a betrayal.

A decree issued by Mursi late on Sunday gives the armed forces the power to arrest civilians and refer them to prosecutors until the announcement of the results of the referendum, which the protesters want cancelled.

Despite its limited nature, the edict will revive memories of Hosni Mubarak’s emergency law, also introduced as a temporary expedient, under which military or state security courts tried thousands of political dissidents and Islamist militants.

But a military source stressed that the measure introduced by a civilian government would have a short shelf-life.

“The latest law giving the armed forces the right to arrest anyone involved in illegal actions such as burning buildings or damaging public sites is to ensure security during the referendum only,” the military source said.

Presidential spokesman Yasser Ali said the committee overseeing the vote had requested the army’s assistance.

“The armed forces will work within a legal framework to secure the referendum and will return (to barracks) as soon as the referendum is over,” Ali said.

Protests and violence have racked Egypt since Mursi decreed himself extraordinary powers he said were needed to speed up a troubled transition since Mubarak’s fall 22 months ago.

The Muslim Brotherhood has voiced anger at the Interior Ministry’s failure to prevent protesters setting fire to its headquarters in Cairo and 28 of its offices elsewhere.

Critics say the draft law puts Egypt in a religious straitjacket. Whatever the outcome of the referendum, the crisis has polarized the country and presages more instability at a time when Mursi is trying to steady a fragile economy.

On Monday, he suspended planned tax increases only hours after the measures had been formally decreed, casting doubts on the government’s ability to push through tough economic reforms that form part of a proposed $ 4.8 billion IMF loan agreement.

“VIOLENT CONFRONTATION”

Rejecting the referendum plan, opposition groups have called for mass protests on Tuesday, saying Mursi’s eagerness to push the constitution through could lead to “violent confrontation”.

Islamists have urged their followers to turn out “in millions” the same day in a show of support for the president and for a referendum they feel sure of winning with their loyal base and perhaps with the votes of Egyptians weary of turmoil.

The opposition National Salvation Front, led by liberals such as Mohamed ElBaradei and Amr Moussa, as well as leftist firebrand Hamdeen Sabahy, has yet to call directly for a boycott of the referendum or to urge their supporters to vote “no”.

Instead it is contesting the legitimacy of the vote and of the whole process by which the constitution was drafted in an Islamist-led assembly from which their representatives withdrew.

The opposition says the document fails to embrace the diversity of 83 million Egyptians, a tenth of whom are Christians, and invites Muslim clerics to influence lawmaking.

But debate over the details has largely given way to noisy street protests and megaphone politics, keeping Egypt off balance and ill-equipped to deal with a looming economic crisis.

“Inevitability of referendum deepens divisions,” was the headline in Al-Gomhuriya newspaper on Monday. Al Ahram daily wrote: “Political forces split over referendum and new decree.”

Mursi issued another decree on Saturday to supersede his November 22 measure putting his own decisions beyond legal challenge until a new constitution and parliament are in place.

While he gave up extra powers as a sop to his opponents, the decisions already taken under them, such as the dismissal of a prosecutor-general appointed by Mubarak, remain intact.

“UNWELCOME” CHOICE

Lamia Kamel, a spokeswoman for former Arab League chief Moussa, said the opposition factions were still discussing whether to boycott the referendum or call for a “no” vote.

“Both paths are unwelcome because they really don’t want the referendum at all,” she said, but predicted a clearer opposition line if the plebiscite went ahead as planned.

A spokeswoman for ElBaradei, former head of the U.N. nuclear watchdog, said: “We do not acknowledge the referendum. The aim is to change the decision and postpone it.”

Mahmoud Ghozlan, the Muslim Brotherhood’s spokesman, said the opposition could stage protests, but should keep the peace.

“They are free to boycott, participate or say no, they can do what they want. The important thing is that it remains in a peaceful context to preserve the country’s safety and security.”

The army stepped into the conflict on Saturday, telling all sides to resolve their disputes via dialogue and warning that it would not allow Egypt to enter a “dark tunnel”.

A military source said the declaration read on state media did not herald a move by the army to retake control of Egypt, which it relinquished in June after managing the transition from Mubarak’s 30 years of military-backed one-man rule.

The draft constitution sets up a national defense council, in which generals will form a majority, and gives civilians some scrutiny over the army – although not enough for critics.

In August Mursi stripped the generals of sweeping powers they had grabbed when he was elected two months earlier, but has since repeatedly paid tribute to the military in public.

So far the army and police have taken a relatively passive role in the protests roiling the most populous Arab nation.

(Additional reporting by Edmund Blair and Yasmine Saleh; editing by Philippa Fletcher)

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