No one is enthusiastic about going through airport security, but a number of stars are speaking out about what they say were overly-invasive searches by TSA employees. This week Jennifer Hudson was photographed wincing and sticking her tongue out during a body search, and model Bar Refaeli Tweeted, “I got a security ‘patdown’ by a woman at the airport that made me feel very uncomfortable and left no doubt about her sexual preferences.”

Her Tweet may not be around for long, since last year Dancing With the Stars’ Cheryl Burke deleted a similar comment. “I think I might have just gotten fingered by a tsa agent!!” she Tweeted. Jersey Shore’s Jenni Farley also shared angry post-patdown thoughts on Twitter, complaining that she was singled out at a North Dakota airport and “treated like a criminal.” Khloe Kardashian got in trouble with victim’s rights advocates after saying in a TV appearance that by administering pat-downs and X-rays, TSA agents “basically are just raping you in public.”

It isn’t just female stars who are complaining about being molested by airport security. After going through security last spring, Wil Wheaton Tweeted, “I got groped so aggressively by TSA at LAX just now, I never want to fly again. Not even my doctor touches my junk that much. F**k you, TSA.” Brian Williams told David Letterman that when he goes though LAX, “They go, they go right in. This new thing, they go right after Dave and the twins. … Either you go in the little thing and you put your arms up and parade around, and somebody in a booth somewhere looks at you naked through your clothing, or you can get the prod of your schmegeggy.”

Though celebrities are more likely to fly first class than the rest of us, it seems they’re treated just like the rest of us when going through security. Except, no one has any particular interest in checking out the content of our underpants.

Source: Hollywood.com

The truth was uncovered, but not everything was revealed. Homeland season 2 premieres September 30th, 2012.

Hundreds turn out for ‘Homeland’ extras casting call

CONCORD, N.C. — There are already more than 200 people waiting in line when I show up for the casting call to be an extra in this season’s filming of “Homeland,” which shot in Cabarrus County last year.

It’s 1:15 p.m., and officials with the Showtime series had scheduled to start seeing people at 1 p.m. at the Carolina Mall in Concord.

“There was probably a line like that at 11 a.m.,” said Linda Phannareth, one of the casting volunteers. “There were at least 150 people.”

As I fill out my paperwork I learn that the casting call is not just for extras to appear in “Homeland,” but also for a new show that will be filming in the area soon called “Banshee.”

Tona Dahlquist, who is in charge of casting extras for both shows, said they needed a big crowd at the Carolina Mall.

“We’ll be using people for the entire season on both shows, which would film until October, so we’ll be needing a lot of people,” she said. “We probably have anywhere from 200 to 300 an episode.”

Dahlquist said between the two shows they will probably need about 2,000 extras a month.

Dahlquist has used the Carolina Mall location before, recruiting extras for the feature film “The Hunger Games” as well as the first season of “Homeland,” which stars Claire Danes.

“We did both of those casting calls here last year and had a good turnout,” she said. “We found a lot of great faces so we figured we would give it another try.”

The crew from “Homeland” was looking for people who looked like they served in the military, as well as skinheads and extras who can double as Amish characters.

Full Article Via Independent Tribune

Dana Stirling, Sasha Tamarim and Adi Sason make top ten finalists group out of 20,000 student entries worldwide • Finalists’ photos to be displayed for a month in London’s prestigious Saatchi Gallery • Grand prize winner to be announced on April 24, the day before the gallery exhibit opens.

Three Israeli students have reached the finals in Google’s Photography Prize competition, beating out more than 20,000 students worldwide who entered the contest. The finalists’ work will be displayed at the prestigious Saatchi Gallery in London for a month-long exhibit beginning April 25. The grand prize winner will be announced on April 24.

The photo competition began about five months ago, with a deadline to submit photos by January 31. Students from around the world were invited to participate by sharing what they consider to be their best work with other Internet surfers worldwide through the Google+ platform. The international panel of seven judges narrowed down the competition to a top 100 shortlist, all of whom won a Galaxy Nexus smartphone. The top 10 finalists’ names were posted on Google’s blog shortly afterward.

The three Israelis among the top ten finalists are Dana Stirling, 22, from Ma’aleh Adumim, a third-year photography student at Hadassah College in Jerusalem; Sasha Tamarim, 25, a third-year student of photographic communications at Hadassah College who immigrated to Israel in 1995; and Adi Sason, 25, a student of photography and digital media at Sapir College of the Negev, who lives in student housing on Kibbutz Sa’ad.

“I found out about the Google competition through hearsay and through friends,” Stirling said. “I didn’t think I had a chance of winning because it is an international competition involving big names like Google and Saatchi. It’s like being a tiny grain of sand in the desert. But I submitted a project that very night that I had photographed during my second year of school. At the start of the project, I tried to recreate or resurrect childhood memories from places that I knew well. Slowly I understood that I wasn’t actually trying to recreate, but rather to create a reality that maybe existed but maybe didn’t. It is present in my personal memory anyway and I was expressing it through photography. I created new memories for myself and casted them onto my childhood; I don’t necessarily remember it.”

Tamarin said that he is very committed to the photographic medium, in which he has invested most of his time and energy in recent years. “I heard about the Google Photography Competition after receiving an invitation from the college. I appreciate this opportunity so much because we are having a tough time finding competitions that don’t require an entry fee or don’t judge work according to the number of social network recommendations one gets.”

Sason’s photographs are part of a broader project documenting nights on Kibbutz Sa’ad, a religious kibbutz located near the Gaza Strip. “Night after night, I wander through the serene pathways of the kibbutz, amazed at the contrast between the noise of daily life and the night’s silence. The silence assumes a central place, pushing other things aside and revealing a hidden life. Night photography adds a perspective and different significance to things. Time is meaningful, and slow shifts over time leave their mark.”

The Google Photography Prize competition is open to students over age 18 around the world who are currently studying in institutions of higher education. They can submit up to eight images in the format of a public Google+ profile. By uploading pictures to the profile, students became competitors; the photos are publicly available on Google+ here.

Source: Israel Hayom

Fathers bequeath physical characteristics and personality traits to their sons, but do they hand down a particular style as well?

In 1996, American columnist Tom Junod wrote a legendary article called “My Father’s Fashion Tips” for the men’s magazine GQ. “I am a son who has squandered his inheritance,” he wrote. “You see; I am incomplete in my knowledge and practice of matters hygienic and sartorial. And yet … I want to know.”

The secrets he revealed ‏(for example, that “the turtleneck is the most flattering thing a man can wear”; “always wear white to the face”; and “make sure to show plenty of cuff”) were part of the family’s sartorial heritage − the thread connecting father and son that has always been central to the history of men’s fashion − which seems to have been lost in recent generations.

“My father believed, absolutely, in the old saw, at once terrifying and liberating, that ‘clothes make the man,’” wrote Junod, “and so did his friends, and so everything they wore had to tell a story … That’s really my father’s first fashion tip, come to think of it: that everything you wear has to add up, that everything has to make sense and absolutely f’ing signify.”

In certain respects, contemporary Western culture has indeed forgotten all those lessons. Since the youth rebellion of the 1950s and ’60s, fathers have been seen as representing the Old World; their suits and button-down shirts have been replaced by jeans and T-shirts. Fathers no longer teach their sons how to tie a tie, and conversations about dress habits, personal style and social etiquette have been replaced by discussions about the stock exchange. In his anarchistic book “Do It!,” written in 1970, Jerry Rubin ­– one of the prominent political activists of the time – wrote, “Don’t trust anyone over 30,” thereby summing up the spirit of the times: The world belongs to the young.

In Israel this oedipal rift was even greater. The pioneering culture rejected the clothing of previous generations almost totally, considering it bourgeois and part of the Diaspora, and therefore objectionable. Since the ’60s, as the world of fashion began to rise to prominence − especially American designs − Israel adopted the general youthful spirit, but remained, as in the beginning, without any formative father figure in this arena.

But all that has changed in recent years. The growing interest in men’s fashion and vintage items has burnished the prestige of “the fathers’ generation,” and stirred up longings for the traditional wardrobe and for symbols of style from an Old World that is no more. Icons like Steve McQueen and Gary Cooper have once again begun to take their place in popular culture, and in their wake old-school haberdasheries and old-fashioned barbershops have begun to crop up in the world’s big cities (but not in Israel).

In recent years, men’s fashion has been trying to learn the secrets of the metaphorical fathers – men created from a model with a rich world of classical items of clothing around it. The figure of the new man is being shaped under the influence of this model: a combination of iconic items from Father’s wardrobe with the essential updates originating in such places as the western neighborhoods of Brooklyn.

U.S.-made chino pants, masculine jackets from the ’50s, bow ties and dandyish pocket handkerchiefs − are all being sold in the finest international stores and appearing in the right magazines. Meanwhile, fashion advice from the previous generation has become journalistic bon ton. This is also turning the blogosphere on its end.

Layers of meaning

Family tradition has also become one of the values disseminated by prestigious fashion houses, which base themselves on crafts and knowledge that have been passed down from father to son, as part of the “heritage” of recent years. At a time when the “fast” fashion chains relied on passing trends and were based on mass production in the Far East, fashion houses whose fame stems from tradition and creative work boosted their reputation, and brands such as J. Barbour & Sons and others emphasized a familial dynasty and authenticity that has been maintained over generations.

The men’s clothing website Mr Porter, which is celebrating its first anniversary, began to publish photographs of the sons and grandsons of famous men, with the idea that style and chic are inherited. Among those photographed is the son of Led Zeppelin soloist Robert Plant, the grandsons of Marlon Brando and Gregory Peck, and other family members of male icons of the 20th century. The Japanese fashion magazine Free and Easy annually publishes an edition entitled “Father’s Style,” and all over the Internet there are sites devoted to offering paternal tips to contemporary young people.

Blogs that document street fashion have also begun to see older people as a reliable source for everything related to dress style. On the successful blog The Sartorialist, stylish fathers are occasionally photographed; its editors conduct competitions in which surfers are asked to send old pictures of their fathers. The fashion world is beginning to understand that it doesn’t belong only to the young.

The way to wear clothes, the nuances of individual style and the proper way to behave in the world are part of the fathers’ subtle legacy − things that are difficult to learn alone, despite thousands of YouTube clips that teach one how to tie a tie. The secrets of proper shaving, cuff links and drinking habits, just like those related to classic suits, accumulate layers of meaning with the change in generations, and absorb the history of gentlemanly behavior and the changing concepts of masculinity and fatherhood.

We asked four pairs of fathers and sons to be photographed for this project in order to examine what happens to fashion and style when they are transmitted from one generation to the next. And although most of the interviewees don’t talk much about these subjects, their pictures and their responses indicate that something is in fact handed down: the way they see the world and themselves, the same casual look of their shirts, the way in which they wear a jacket, or look into the camera and at each other. Each pair has a specific style, even if it’s hard to put into words.

At the end of Junod’s GQ article he wrote: “As I walk into my life I walk into his, into the gift he gave me, his first and final fashion tip: the knowledge that a man doesn’t belong to anyone. That he belongs to his secrets. That his secrets belong to him.”

Some of these secrets are revealed through the pictures, and others will continue to be handed down from fathers to sons, as with every generation.

Source: Haaretz.com

American-Jewish billionaire Nicolas Berggruen acquires controlling interest in fast food chain, plans IPO

American-Jewish billionaire Nicolas Berggruen has purchased the controlling interest in Burger King.

Berggruen invested $1.4 billion in the fast food chain, which is considered the second-largest in the world, and is reportedly planning to take the company public via the New York Stock Exchange.

Burger King left Israel in 2010, converging with the local Burger Ranch chain; but there are speculations that it will now try to gain a foothold in the Israeli fast food market once more.

Formed in the United States in the 1950s, Burger King has 12,000 branches in 70 countries worldwide.

Alongside his business ventures and private equity holdings, Berggruen is also the world’s largest private collector of Picasso art.

One of his current Israeli ventures includes the construction of Meyer Tower in Tel Aviv, which is expected to be the most expensive residential building in Israel.

Source: Ynetnews.com

’A very important development in Jewish law,’ says President of the Israeli Conservative Movement Rabbinical Assembly.

Israel’s Masorti (Conservative) Movement decided to approve the ordination of homosexual rabbis, in a dramatic vote on Thursday.

The Schechter Rabbinical Seminary, affiliated with the movement, will admit gay and lesbian students for training as spiritual leaders as of the upcoming school year.

In doing so the Israeli Conservative Movement is joining the American branch of the movement, whose rabbinical seminaries have been admitting gay students for some years.

The question whether or not to ordain gay and lesbian rabbis has been rattling the Conservative Movement in Israel and the U.S. for the past decade. Unlike the Reform movement that took to the question with ease, deciding firmly on the acceptance of gay rabbis. The Conservative Movement, whose rabbis see themselves bound to Jewish law, has been caught up in heated debate over the subject.

Years of discussion led to two contradictory religious rulings in 2006, one requiring the ordination of gay and lesbian rabbis and another banning any such act. The two rabbinical seminaries affiliated with the movement in the U.S. move the ruling allowing the ordination, while the seminaries in Jerusalem and Buenos Aires adopted the ban on ordination. The issue nearly caused a rift in the movement.

The debate continued to wage at the Schechter Rabbinical Seminary, with two female rabbis quitting the institute, one in opposition to the ordination of gay rabbis; the other over the hesitation shown by the organization in accepting gay and lesbian students into its ranks.

On Thursday, the institute’s general council held another vote on the subject. Out of the 18 rabbis that attended, all voted to admit homosexual students, with one rabbi abstaining.

Rabbi Mauricio Balter, President of the Israeli Conservative Movement Rabbinical Assembly expressed his support of the move.

“I see it as a very important development in Jewish law,” Rabbi Balter told Haaretz, adding: “It is the right thing to do. We were all made in the image of god, and as such we are all made equal. For me this is a very important value. I always said we should admit gay and lesbians into our ranks.”

“I’m glad we had the vote and that it went the way it did,” Rabbi Balter continued. “The decision to hold a vote was correct as can be seen by the fact that there wasn’t a single dissenting vote,” he said

The seminary’s rabbinic program – a two year study program incorporating a MA in Jewish studies that ends with an examination by a council of conservative rabbis, who authorize the ordination, similar to the examination exams in Orthodox Judaism.

As of next year the students will select their testers, as long as their choice is authorized by the school’s dean, thus avoiding the possibility that rabbis that opposed the integration of homosexual students will thwart the ordination of candidates based on their sexual orientation.

The Schechter Rabbinical Seminary stressed that the students ordained as rabbis will continue to meet the institute standards and will be committed to a moral, Jewish, and Zionist lifestyle. In addition, applicants are expected to have a extensive background in Jewish studies including the Talmud, Jewish law, bible studies, rabbinic teachings, and Jewish philosophy, as well as an express willingness to participate in public works, such as working in the community, in Jewish education or spiritual counseling.

People working at the seminary admitted that over the years, members of the American Conservative Movement have been applying pressure to accept gay and lesbian students, as the American seminaries have been doing for some years now.

The institute also stressed that the decision was mostly a formality since it had never checked for the sexual orientation of its applicants.

Source: Haaretz.com

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