Actor convinces corporate giant to take a leap of faith on doomsday film

Viggo Mortensen believes in “The Road.”

That’s why he’s sitting inside a Manhattan hotel restaurant talking up his new film, a post-apocalyptic based on the Cormac McCarthy bestseller.

Yes, it is part of his job, part of any actor’s job, to do the promotional rounds. It’s why talk shows exist and why publicists are usually so high-strung. But talking with Mortensen about “The Road” would give even the greatest cynic pause. He was so invested in the film, he even convinced a scared corporate giant to take a leap of faith (more on that later).

Wearing his hair shoulder length and sporting a jersey of his favorite team, Argentina’s San Lorenzo soccer club, the actor discusses over coffee what he says is one of the most rewarding experiences of a stunningly diverse career.

“A movie like ‘The Road,’ even though it’s only a movie, or the book of ‘The Road,’ it can change for awhile the way you see yourself and those around you,” Mortensen said. “Maybe it makes you appreciate life a little bit more.”

“You get to a point in a world like the one described in this movie where it would be easy to say…what’s the point of being kind or compassionate, or generous…there’s no point, not in this world. It’s every man for himself. And yet if you choose, out of your own free will, to be kind anyway, that’s incredibly noble and beautiful.”

“If someone says, what’s the movie about? It’s about realizing that it’s better to be kind, and to be grateful for life. That simple realization is incredibly profound.”

To call “The Road” a passion project for Mortensen may be an understatement. Not only did it involve the actor’s now-patented extreme preparation and dedication — he lost a tremendous amount of weight to realistically portray his character’s emaciation — but also the shoot itself was grueling.

How many film shoots have you ever heard of where the cast and crew prayed for rain?

Shot in locations as varied as Washington’s Mount St. Helens, Oregon, New Orleans and central Pennsylvania, the production sometimes would have to shut down for the day when sunshine creeped through the clouds, or if planes flew overhead.

Set in a near future when the entire planet has been devastated by an unknown calamity, Mortensen plays the nameless father of a young boy (Kodi Smit-McPhee) born just after civilization ended. They wander across the charred American landscape, surviving on whatever scraps they can find, while avoiding the surrounding dangers.

The film is set against a familiar backdrop to genre movie fans: Earth in the future, a wasteland. But that’s where the similarities mostly end.

There are no sentient machines running things. And the fact that we don’t know what caused the disaster makes it even more powerful and realistic, according to director John Hillcoat.

Robbie Williams has said he is not engaged to his girlfriend, despite his mother appearing to confirm the news.

Under the heading “Robbie And Ayda: Are They Or Aren’t They?” on his official website, Williams simply wrote: “Hey all. We are not engaged. Rob.”

Speculation began when the singer made an off-the-cuff proposal to Ayda Field on an Australian radio show.

His spokesman said it was a joke, but his mother Jan later told BBC 5 live he had been planning to pop the question.

After Williams published his denial on Saturday, his spokesman said: “We have no more comment on this apart from to confirm that they are not engaged.”

On Friday, Mrs Williams told 5 live that her son had revealed his proposal plans to her “a week ago”.

She said she was “really pleased” for the couple, adding: “I’ve always wanted a daughter-in-law.”

Ayda Field has been with Robbie for almost three years

Asked when she thought the wedding would be, Mrs Williams said: “I don’t think it will be that far in the not-too-distant future, but that’s all I’m going to say on that.”

She added: “I’m very excited. I’m really pleased. They’ve been together for nearly three years, so it’s about time.

“She’s a great mate, as well as a lover. She’s got all the qualities that he needs in a girl. It’s a lovely match.”

Williams had appeared on Australian radio station 2Day FM, where breakfast show host Jackie Henderson told him that Sydney had a reputation for celebrity proposals.

Turning to his girlfriend, the 35-year-old said: “Ayda Field, I love you so much. Do you mind being my betrothed for the end of time?”

Field, who was in the studio at the time, laughed before saying: “I would love to be your betrothed ’til the end of time.”

The star performed at the Aria Awards in Australia on Friday

He then borrowed Henderson’s frog ring and slipped it onto Field’s finger.

For the remainder of the show, Williams accepted the congratulations of fans who phoned in to speak to him.

But when one caller asked Williams to divulge the last lie he had told, he replied: “I told one this morning.

“I mainly just tell people the truth. With the exception of a few white lies here and there.”

Earlier this month, Williams told Jonathan Ross on his chat show that he thought he was “going to be a bachelor” until he met Field.

“I was introduced to Ayda and things just changed. She’s a wonderful person and I’m in love. She’s really broody and I’m getting there,” he said.

Survey by ship finds satellite data about thicker Arctic ice was wrong

Arctic sea ice conditions are even worse than feared after a survey found that ice detected as older and thicker by satellites is actually thin and fragile, a prominent Canadian researcher reported Friday.

University of Manitoba researcher David Barber said experts around the world believed the ice was recovering because satellite images showed it expanding, but the thick, multiyear frozen sheets have been replaced by thin ice that cannot support the weight of a polar bear.

“Polar bears are being restricted to a small fringe of where this multiyear sea ice is. As we went further and further north, we saw less and less polar bears because this ice wasn’t even strong enough for the polar bears to stand on,” said Barber, who returned from an expedition to the Beaufort Sea in September.

Barber said permanent ice, which is normally up to 30 feet thick, was easily pierced by the research icebreaker he and his team were on.

The deterioration has far-reaching consequences for the North and its iconic mammal. Polar bears that rely on the permanent ice to survive the summer have fewer and fewer places of refuge, said Barber, who has been studying the Arctic ecosystem for 25 years.

Bears eating bears for food?
Scientists also said Friday that shrinking Arctic sea ice may be forcing some hungry polar bears to cannibalize bear cubs.

At least seven cases of mature male polar bears eating bear cubs have been spotted this year among the animals around Churchill, Manitoba, said Ian Stirling, a retired Environment Canada biologist who specializes in the Churchill bears.

Stirling said evidence suggests the cubs are being killed for food, not just so the male can mate with the sow.

He said the Hudson Bay sea ice, which the bears use to hunt the seals they consume to fatten up for winter, isn’t appearing until weeks later than it used to.

The sea ice findings, which are soon to be published in the peer-reviewed journal Geophysical Research Letters, come as a shock to experts worldwide.

Although northern sea ice hit a record low in 2007, researchers believed it was recovering because of what they were seeing on satellite images.

But the satellites the experts relied on were misleading because the rotten ice looked sturdy on the surface and has a similar superficial temperature, Barber explained.

“The satellites give us only part of the story. The multiyear ice is disappearing and it’s almost all gone now from the northern hemisphere.”

Ice floe breaks up in 5 minutes
Barber said his team finally reached what it thought was stable ice, only to watch a crack appear just as researchers were preparing to descend onto the floe.

“As I watched, over the course of five minutes, the entire multiyear ice floe broke up into pieces. This floe was 10 miles across,” said Barber, who holds the Canada research chair in Arctic science at the University of Manitoba.

The ice is unable to withstand battering waves and storms because global warming is rapidly melting it at a rate of 27,000 square miles each year, he said.

Multiyear sea ice used to cover 90 percent of the Arctic basin, Barber said. It now covers roughly 19 percent. Where it used to be up to 33 feet thick, it’s now 6 feet at most.

The lack of sea ice may be good news to some who want to see the North opened to industry. Without thick ice blocking the way, ships can more easily gain access to the Arctic’s natural resources.

“We were doing almost the same speed we’d do in open water through what we thought was multiyear sea ice,” Barber said. “Transportation and all the issues of navigation across the pole all become very real when you no longer have any multiyear sea ice.”

Unsubstantiated accounts raise new questions about treatment of suspects

KABUL, Afghanistan - Two Afghan teenagers held in U.S. detention north of Kabul this year said they were beaten by American guards, photographed naked, deprived of sleep and held in solitary confinement in concrete cells for at least two weeks while undergoing daily interrogation about their alleged links to the Taliban.

The accounts could not be independently substantiated. But in successive, on-the-record interviews, the teenagers presented a detailed, consistent portrait suggesting that the abusive treatment of suspected insurgents has in some cases continued under the Obama administration, despite steps that President Obama has said would put an end to the harsh interrogation practices authorized by the Bush administration after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.

The two teenagers — Issa Mohammad, 17, and Abdul Rashid, who said he is younger than 16 — said in interviews this week that they were punched and slapped in the face by their captors during their time at Bagram air base, where they were held in individual cells. Rashid said his interrogator forced him to look at pornography alongside a photograph of his mother. The holding center described by the teenagers appeared to have been a facility run by U.S. Special Operations forces that is separate from the Bagram Theater Internment Facility, the main American-run prison, which holds about 700 detainees. The teenagers’ descriptions of a holding area on a different part of the Bagram base are consistent with the accounts of two other former detainees, who say they endured similar mistreatment, but not beatings, while being held last year at what Afghans call Bagram’s “black” prison.

A Defense Department spokesman, Lt. Col. Mark Wright, said that the military does not respond to each allegation of detainee abuse, but that all prisoners are treated humanely and in accordance with the Geneva Conventions and U.S. law.

“Department of Defense policy is and always has been to treat detainees humanely. There have been well-documented instances where that policy was not followed, and service members have been held accountable for their actions in those cases,” he said.

Jonathan Horowitz, who works on detention issues in Afghanistan for the Open Society Institute, said: “These allegations of physical and mental abuse at a secretive facility are, if true, patently unacceptable and must be investigated.”

Executive order
There have been reports about the existence of an interrogation facility at Bagram that is run by Special Operations forces, but little has been disclosed about living conditions or interrogation methods there. Representatives of the International Committee of the Red Cross have not been permitted access to the detainees at this facility. The site has continued to operate under the terms of an executive order that Obama signed soon after taking office, which forced the closure of secret prisons run by the CIA but not those run by Special Operations forces.

Mistreatment such as beating, lengthy sleep deprivation and sexual humiliation is prohibited during interrogations under the Army Field Manual, and it is illegal under the Detainee Treatment Act of 2005.

Intelligence chief blames home-made device for derailment that killed 26

A man walks by a damaged railway carriage near the village of Uglovka, Russia, on Saturday after the train derailed

UGLOVKA, Russia - The head of Russia’s domestic intelligence service said Saturday that a bomb was behind the derailment of an express train that left scores dead and nearly 100 injured.

Alexander Borotnikov, head of the Federal Security Service, told Russian President Dmitry Medvedev that bomb derailed the train late on Friday.

The Interfax and RIA Novosti news agencies quoted Borotnikov as saying that the bomb was home-made and was equivalent to 15 lbs of TNT.

The Nevsky Express was carrying hundreds of passengers from Moscow to the northern city of St. Petersburg.

The death toll remained unclear: Health Ministry officials said 26 people were killed but prosecutors put the total at 30.

Earlier, Vladimir Yakunin, the president of Russian Railways, told reporters that the accident may have been caused by an explosion under the tracks.

“There is objective evidence that… a blast from an explosive device is one of the explanations for the Nevsky Express incident,” he said.

‘Tense’
Medvedev called for calm, saying in televised comments Saturday that “we need there to be no chaos, because the situation is tense as it is.”

The 14-carriage luxury train, popular with business executives and government officials, had been carrying 633 passengers and 20 railway personnel when the last three cars left the tracks in a rural area near the border of the Novgorod and Tver provinces, about 250 miles northwest of Moscow and 150 miles southeast of St. Petersburg.

Police and prosecutors swarmed over the disaster site Saturday and restricted access to what was reported to be a possible bomb crater.

Witnesses told Channel One state television they believed a bomb blast may have been the cause.

“It was immensely scary. I think it was an act of terrorism because there was a bang,” said passenger Vitaly Rafikov, who was unhurt in the accident and helped with the rescue, hauling victims from the wreckage and lighting fires for warmth.

Igor Pechnikov described being in the second of the three derailed cars. “A trembling began, and the carriage jolted violently to the left. I flew through half of the carriage,” he said.

Scattered debris
Emergency workers wrapped in blankets and huddled around fires Saturday morning as a light rain started to fall. Two huge cranes were lifting pieces of wreckage from the site, as rescuers searched for more possible victims.

A bashed and battered railway carriage lay on its side across the tracks. Baggage and metal debris lay scattered in the mud.

Terrorism has been a major concern in Russia since the 1991 collapse of the Soviet Union, as Chechen rebels have clashed with government forces in two wars and Islamist separatists continue to target law enforcement officials.

Attacks are relatively frequent across Russia’s North Caucasus, and include the December 2003 suicide bombing of a train near Chechnya that killed 44 people.

The last fatal terrorist attacks outside the volatile southern region, however, occurred in 2004 with the twin bombings of passenger aircraft that killed more than 80 people.

Those attacks were blamed on Chechen rebels, as were the February 2004 Moscow metro bombings that killed 40 people.

A 2002 hostage-taking at a Moscow theater ended with the deaths of around 130 people, after Russian special forces sprayed a chemical agent into the building before storming it.

The 2007 derailment of a train on the Moscow-St. Petersburg line was caused by an explosion and injured 27 people. Authorities have arrested two suspects and are searching for a third — a former military officer.

Another train derailment in June 2005 left at least 12 injured. The train had been traveling from Chechnya to Moscow.