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Husband charged with murdering soldier wife

(CNN) — The Marine husband of a slain Fort Bragg soldier was charged with murder Monday and another Marine was charged with aiding the crime, a local police chief said.

Authorities have been searching for the missing soldier, Army 2nd Lt. Holley Wimunc, 24, since a fire torched her apartment on July 10.

Marine Cpl. John Wimunc and fellow Marine Lance Cpl. Kyle Alden were initially charged with arson, but after police interviews Wimunc was charged with first-degree murder, said Fayetteville Police Chief Tom Bergamine.

Alden was charged with felony accessory after the fact to first-degree murder, Bergamine said.

Both were taken to Cumberland County’s jail and held without bond, he said.

Earlier, a witness found a charred body in woods, but Detective Jeff Locklear told reporters that police were still awaiting a positive identification from the medical examiner and could not say for certain it was Holly Wimunc.

The lieutenant’s father released a statement about the death Monday in which he said his daughter was a nurse at a military hospital and had two children.

It is with profound sadness that our family just received the news from authorities that our beloved daughter Holley is dead, Wimunc’s father said in a statement released to CNN affiliate WRAL in Raleigh, North Carolina.

Since last Thursday’s shocking news about Holley’s burned apartment and her missing person status, our family through the country has nonetheless been holding on to a thin thread of hope that she would be found alive.

Military officials said both Marines were stationed at Camp Lejeune, which is about two hours away from Wimunc’s Fayetteville home.

Joe Lenczyk — resident agent-in-charge for the federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives — said Wimunc and her husband were estranged and lived apart.

Wimunc is the second female soldier from Fort Bragg to die under suspicious circumstances in recent weeks.

Spc. Megan Lynn Touma, 23, was seven months pregnant at the time of her death in June, authorities said. Investigators say they are treating that death as a homicide.

found here.

Kerala stars in Santosh Sivan’s English-language debut

LONDON, England (CNN) — It is roads, of all things, that Indian director Santosh Sivan cites as the inspiration behind his exquisite English-language debut Before the Rains.

As a kid I used to travel to all these fantastic hills which had all the spices and there used to be these beautiful curving roads going deep into the jungles, he remembers.

In Before the Rains Sivan has managed to conjure up the Kerala of his childhood recollections — and there can be few films that evoke India’s natural beauty more breathtakingly.

I got to know that these [roads] were made by the British people and it always interested me how British people must have interacted with my forefathers because we never had a chance to interact with them, Sivan continues. Watch a clip of Santosh Sivan talking to CNN about Before the Rains.

It is in the dying days of the Empire among the colonialists of the 1930s — the ambitious men who hacked paths through the Keralan jungle to their fortunes in the spice plantations — that Sivan sets his tale of passion and nationalism.

English spice baron Henry Moores (Linus Roach) and faithful aide T.K. (Rahul Bose) are racing to finish the road to his cardamom and clove plantation before the torrential rains of the monsoon hit.

Complicating matters is Moore’s affair with a village woman (Nandita Das) which ignites colonial tensions and pushes T.K. — a man caught between two cultures — to the limits of his allegiance.

The film’s original premise comes from a short film set in Israel called Red Roofs by little-known writer-director Dany Verete. It concerns the affair between an Israeli and his housemaid, the Bedouin assistant who is forced to deal with it and the tragic outcome.

Sivan liked the idea but not the setting: We discussed the possibility of maybe making it into a feature film and setting it in a colonial kind of past in India. Sivan and screenwriter Cathy Rabin then set about transforming the basic story into a ‘hothouse of lust, empire and guilt.’

It comes as no great surprise that the film is presented by Merchant Ivory, the production company famous for beautifully-crafted period dramas like A Room with a View and Howard’s End.

But the inevitable comparison is with A Passage to India, Merchant Ivory’s arid and frightfully pukka evocation of 1920s colonial India.

Both films deal with some of the syndromes characterized in the days of the Raj — the Indian who thinks he is equal with the Englishman only to discover he is not and the ways in which India was both subjugated by the Empire and able to use the lessons of its rule to gain independence.

David Lean’s Oscar-winning film is probably more successful at dealing with the political issues and some critics have said it is a more accomplished film.

In a review, The Hollywood Reporter said Before the Rains was: Lacking the emotional power necessary to fuel its contrived plot elements, the film is a minor entry in the Merchant Ivory canon.

In his film’s defence, Sivan says: I thought the film had a very universal appeal because it is what happens in a place like New York or any metropolitan place where people from different cultures are together.

Each culture is very curious about the other… it makes them attracted to each other and then you find all these other problems that each culture has of its own, so the film also resonates in that way.

But to anyone who remembers the dust and parched mountains of A Passage the awe-inspiring beauty of the landscapes rendered by Sivan will seem like another country. They are the film’s great achievement.

The visual language, the camera as such and the way you do things has such a fantastic universal appeal. So, I think the visual language is the film, he says of the attention lavished on the film’s imagery.

Sivan who played the role of both director and director of photography on Before the Rains started his film career as a cinematographer and has credits on 45 films. He has received India’s national award for best cinematographer five times.

Before the Rains is Sivan’s eighth film as a director — he has since directed Tahaan: A Boy with a Grenade a Hindi-language terrorism drama which premiered at Cannes this year — an indication of the Indian expatriate community’s growing appetite for films that deal with controversial or sexual themes without falling back on musical dance routines.

A household name in India, international acclaim came in 1998 when The Terrorist, Sivan’s ultra-low budget Tamil-language thriller about a girl suicide bomber won the Best Director, Best Actress Awards and the Golden Pyramid Award at the Cairo International Film festival.

John Malkovich, the actor known for roles in Dangerous Liaisons and Being John Malkovich, was a member of the Cairo jury that gave Sivan the top award.

During the director’s last trip to the U.S. — to promote Before the Rains at the Tribeca film festival in New York — Malkovich asked Sivan to direct him in the screen adaptation of Nobel Prize-winning author J M Coetzee’s 1980 masterpiece Waiting for the Barbarians.

found here.

Tabloid: F1 chief’s orgy not just ‘hanky spanky’

(CNN) — Formula One chief Max Mosley’s sado-masochistic orgy with five prostitutes was not just hanky spanky, London’s High Court has been told.

Mark Warby, QC, making his closing speech for the News of the World, said Mosley was trying to make out that what the newspaper dubbed a sick Nazi orgy was nothing more than hanky-spanky, the British Press Association reported.

Mosley is suing the News of the World for invasion of privacy over a story alleging he attended a five-hour sex session involving Nazi role-play. Mosley has admitted taking part in SM activities for 45 years but says he finds the idea of Nazi sex fantasies abhorrent.

Mosley, 68, is president of Formula One’s governing body — the FIA — and the son of the late British fascist politician Oswald Mosley and his wife, Diana Mitford.

Warby told the court there had been talk of meetings or parties and squeamishness about the use of the word brutal.

There was a general attempt both in the written evidence of the women and in oral evidence to present it as some kind of worthy activity attended by the most strict health and safety precautions as though it was all being carried out under the guidance of the Bondage and Sadomasochism Regulatory Authority. Warby said.

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Chavez loosens terms of oil-supply pact

MARACAIBO, Venezuela (AP) — Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez touted a pact delivering fuel to Caribbean nations and loosened the financing terms to aid countries struggling with high oil prices.

Chavez on Sunday said nations taking part in the Petrocaribe initiative will now be required to pay just 40 percent of the bill within 90 days — down from the current 50 percent. He said the rest can be paid over the next 25 years at a fixed interest rate of 1 percent as long as oil prices are above $100 a barrel.

That could compensate for the horrible curve of the jump in oil prices, Chavez said. He added that 70 percent of payments may be deferred, if oil reaches $150 a barrel.

Chavez said Venezuela aims to continue strengthening the Petrocaribe accord and make it into an anti-hunger shield for countries in the Caribbean and Central and South America.

Three years after Petrocaribe began, though, figures released by officials show the initiative is still not operating at full strength because of transportation and storage problems.

Oil Minister Rafael Ramirez said member countries other than Cuba are receiving a total of 86,000 barrels of oil a day — significantly less than their quota of 125,000.

Ramirez said Venezuela expects performance will improve with the expansion of an oil distribution network in the Caribbean, including installing storage tanks and rehabilitating Cuba’s Soviet-era Cienfuegos refinery.

found here.

Chavez loosens terms of oil-supply pact

MARACAIBO, Venezuela (AP) — Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez touted a pact delivering fuel to Caribbean nations and loosened the financing terms to aid countries struggling with high oil prices.

Chavez on Sunday said nations taking part in the Petrocaribe initiative will now be required to pay just 40 percent of the bill within 90 days — down from the current 50 percent. He said the rest can be paid over the next 25 years at a fixed interest rate of 1 percent as long as oil prices are above $100 a barrel.

That could compensate for the horrible curve of the jump in oil prices, Chavez said. He added that 70 percent of payments may be deferred, if oil reaches $150 a barrel.

Chavez said Venezuela aims to continue strengthening the Petrocaribe accord and make it into an anti-hunger shield for countries in the Caribbean and Central and South America.

Three years after Petrocaribe began, though, figures released by officials show the initiative is still not operating at full strength because of transportation and storage problems.

Oil Minister Rafael Ramirez said member countries other than Cuba are receiving a total of 86,000 barrels of oil a day — significantly less than their quota of 125,000.

Ramirez said Venezuela expects performance will improve with the expansion of an oil distribution network in the Caribbean, including installing storage tanks and rehabilitating Cuba’s Soviet-era Cienfuegos refinery.

found here.