Viral rapper PSY apologizes for anti-US protests
Label: LifestyleSouth Korean rapper and Internet sensation PSY is apologizing to Americans for participating in anti-U.S. protests several years ago.
Park Jae-sang, who performs as PSY, issued a statement Friday after reports surfaced that he had participated in concerts protesting the U.S. military presence in South Korea during the early stages of the Iraq war.
At a 2004 concert, the “Gangnam Style” rapper performs a song with lyrics about killing “Yankees” who have been torturing Iraqi captives and their families “slowly and painfully.” In another protest, he smashed a model of a U.S. tank on stage.
“While I’m grateful for the freedom to express one’s self, I’ve learned there are limits to what language is appropriate and I’m deeply sorry for how these lyrics could be interpreted,” he wrote in the statement. “I will forever be sorry for any pain I have caused by those words.”
The 34-year-old rapper says the protests were part of a “deeply emotional” reaction to the war and the death of two Korean school girls, who were killed when a U.S. military vehicle hit them as they walked alongside the road. He noted antiwar sentiment was high around the world at the time.
PSY attended college in the U.S. and says he understands the sacrifices U.S. military members have made to protect South Korea and other nations. He has recently performed in front of servicemen and women.
“And I hope they and all Americans can accept my apology,” he wrote. “While it’s important that we express our opinions, I deeply regret the inflammatory and inappropriate language I used to do so. In my music, I try to give people a release, a reason to smile. I have learned that thru music, our universal language we can all come together as a culture of humanity and I hope that you will accept my apology.”
His participation in the protests was no secret in South Korea, where the U.S. has had a large military presence since the Korean War, but was not generally known in America until recent news reports.
PSY did not write “Dear American,” a song by The N.E.X.T., but he does perform it. The song exhorts the listener to kill the Yankees who are torturing Iraqi captives, their superiors who ordered the torture and their families. At one point he raps: “Kill their daughters, mothers, daughters-in-law, and fathers/Kill them all slowly and painfully.”
PSY launched to international acclaim based on the viral nature of his “Gangnam Style” video. It became YouTube’s most watched video, making him a millionaire who freely crossed cultural boundaries around the world. Much of that success has happened in the U.S., where the rapper has managed to weave himself into pop culture.
He recently appeared on the American Music Awards, dancing alongside MC Hammer in a melding of memorable dance moves that book-end the last two decades. And the Internet is awash with copycat versions of the song. Even former Republican Sen. Alan Simpson, the 81-year-old co-chairman of President Barack Obama‘s deficit commission, got in on the fun, recently using the song in a video to urge young Americans to avoid credit card debt.
It remains to be seen how PSY’s American fans will react. Obama, the father of two pop music fans, wasn’t letting the news change his plans, though.
Earlier Friday, the White House confirmed Obama and his family will attend a Dec. 21 charity concert where PSY is among the performers. A spokesman says it’s customary for the president to attend the “Christmas in Washington” concert, which will be broadcast on TNT. The White House has no role in choosing performers for the event, which benefits the National Children’s Medical Center.
Entertainment News Headlines – Yahoo! News
Negotiators see glimmers of progress on farm bill
Label: BusinessWASHINGTON (Reuters) – With a week left to act, agricultural leaders in Congress are still deadlocked on two major issues for a new U.S. farm bill, cuts in crop subsidies and reductions in food stamps, said two of the four key negotiators on Thursday.
But the leaders of the House and Senate agriculture committees suggested that recent talks had yielded at least some progress.
Without reauthorization, U.S. farm policy would revert to the provisions of the Agricultural Act of 1949, the last “permanent” farm bill and one crafted for an entirely different U.S. economy.
Among other things, if lawmakers do not agree on a new bill, milk prices in U.S. grocery stores could double next month under terms of the fall-back statute which would also limit plantings while pushing up farm subsidies by billions of dollars.
A new farm bill would now likely be absorbed into an overall budget-cutting bill that could avert the looming “fiscal cliff” of tax increases and spending cuts. Farm spending cuts of $ 23 billion to $ 35 billion have been floated.
In speeches at a farm policy conference in Washington on Thursday, the leaders of the House and Senate Agriculture committees were adamant the final version of the five-year, $ 500 billion bill must include elements that are lightning rods for controversy.
Congress is scheduled to adjourn for the year on December 14, although top Republicans have said it will not adjourn until a solution to the fiscal cliff has been announced.
“I would rather have nothing” than a farm bill that does not give farmers the option of price supports, said House Agriculture chairman Frank Lucas. “You need to give our producers a choice.”
The Senate version of the farm bill, passed in June with proposed spending cuts totaling $ 23 billion, would replace traditional farm subsidies with an insurance-like program that compensates grain and oilseed growers when revenue from a crop is more than 11 percent below average.
Senate Agriculture chairwoman Debbie Stabenow said on Thursday that there were strong differences between the House and Senate versions.
“I would never accept what the House did” in slashing $ 16 billion in funding for food stamps, the steepest cuts in a generation for a program that helps millions of lower-income Americans keep food on the table.
The Senate bill would cut food stamps by $ 4 billion.
Nonetheless, Lucas and Stabenow said a compromise may be agreed upon in time to become part of a must-pass deficit bill.
An Oklahoma Republican, Lucas said “a lot of progress” has been made in closed-door discussions among the four leaders of the committees. Stabenow, a Michigan Democrat, echoed that sentiment.
“I am very encouraged by the negotiations … If people of good will sit around the table, you can work it out,” she said.
There are some areas of agreement. Both sides would cut conservation spending by $ 6 billion and crop subsidies by more than $ 13 billion, partly by ending direct-payment subsidies now issued regardless of need.
They also would expand the federally subsidized crop insurance system, now the largest strand in the farm safety net, and convert cotton subsidies to an insurance program, which would resolve a World Trade Organization ruling against the U.S. cotton program.
Still, farm subsidies and food stamps are the chief disputes. And Lucas said a transition period may be needed to allow time to put the new law into effect.
He left open the possibility of another round of the $ 5 billion-a-year direct payment program, depending on the savings demanded by congressional leaders.
The precise target for farm spending cuts may be determined as part of high-level deal-making between the White House and Congress. The White House has suggested cuts of $ 32 billion, for example, including reduction in crop insurance.
(Reporting by Charles Abbott; editing by Ros Krasny and Jim Marshall)
Economy News Headlines – Yahoo! News
No Grammy love for Justin Bieber, One Direction
Label: TechnologyLOS ANGELES (Reuters) – Irate fans of Justin Bieber and boy band One Direction took to social media on Thursday to voice their outrage after being snubbed by the Grammys for a chance to win the biggest honors in the music industry.
Indie-pop band fun and rapper Frank Ocean led the 2013 nominations, tying with The Black Keys, Mumford & Sons, Jay-Z and Kanye West for six nods. But The Recording Academy overlooked some of the year’s biggest and most commercially successful artists in Wednesday’s nominations.
While Bieber, 18, who won three American Music Awards in November, stayed quiet on his omission, his manager Scooter Braun took to Twitter.
“Grammy board u blew it on this one. the hardest thing to do is transition, keep the train moving. The kid delivered. Huge successful album, sold out tour, and won people over. … This time he deserved to be recognized,” Braun posted in a series of tweets.
Many of Bieber’s 31 million Twitter fans quickly followed suit, with hashtags such as #BieberForGrammys trending on the micro-blogging service.
The Canadian singer, who has never won a Grammy, in June released album “Believe,” showcasing a more grown-up image. The album, which produced top 10 hits “Boyfriend” and “As Long As You Love Me,” has sold more than 1.1 million copies.
British boy band One Direction was also left empty-handed despite their debut album “Up All Night” having topped the Billboard 200 album chart.
The quintet has performed sold-out shows across the world and won three MTV video music awards earlier this year.
The Grammy Awards are voted on by members of The Recording Academy and recognize achievement in 81 categories.
Lady Gaga, rapper Nicki Minaj and Korea’s Psy also failed to snag any nominations.
While Gaga hasn’t released new music this year, focusing on her global tour, Minaj released “Pink Friday: Roman Reloaded,” which topped the Billboard 200 chart and spawned singles such as “Starships.”
Psy may have YouTube’s most watched video ever with “Gangnam Style,” – over 897 million views – but he missed out on becoming the first Korean artist to receive a Grammy nod.
The Grammy Awards will be handed out at a live performance show and ceremony on February 10 in Los Angeles.
(Reporting By Piya Sinha-Roy; editing by Jill Serjeant and Todd Eastham)
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Actor Stephen Baldwin charged in NY tax case
Label: LifestyleWHITE PLAINS, N.Y. (AP) — Actor Stephen Baldwin was charged Thursday with failing to pay New York state taxes for three years, amassing a $ 350,000 debt.
Rockland County District Attorney Thomas Zugibe said Baldwin, of Upper Grandview, skipped his taxes in 2008, 2009 and 2010.
The youngest of the four acting Baldwin brothers pleaded not guilty at an arraignment and was freed without bail. His lawyer, Russell Yankwitt, said Baldwin should not have been charged.
“Mr. Baldwin did not commit any crimes, and he’s working with the district attorney‘s office and the New York State Tax Department to resolve any differences,” Yankwitt said.
The district attorney said Baldwin could face up to four years in prison if convicted. The actor is due back in court on Feb. 5.
Zugibe said Baldwin owes more than $ 350,000 in tax and penalties.
“We cannot afford to allow wealthy residents to break the law by cheating on their taxes,” the district attorney said. “The defendant’s repetitive failure to file returns and pay taxes over a period of several years contributes to the sweeping cutbacks and closures in local government and in our schools.”
Thomas Mattox, the state tax commissioner, said, “It is rare and unfortunate for a personal income tax case to require such strong enforcement measures.”
Baldwin, 46, starred in 1995′s “The Usual Suspects” and appeared in 1989′s “Born on the Fourth of July.” He is scheduled to appear in March on NBC’s “The Celebrity Apprentice.”
His brothers Alec, William and Daniel are also actors.
A bankruptcy filing in 2009 said Stephen Baldwin owed $ 1.2 million on two mortgages, $ 1 million in taxes and $ 70,000 on credit cards.
In October, Baldwin pleaded guilty in Manhattan to unlicensed driving and was ordered to pay a $ 75 fine. Earlier this year, he lost a $ 17 million civil case in New Orleans after claiming that actor Kevin Costner and a business partner duped him in a deal related to the cleanup of the 2010 Gulf of Mexico oil spill. The actors and others had formed a company that marketed devices that separate oil from water.
Baldwin co-hosts a radio show with conservative talk figure Kevin McCullough.
Entertainment News Headlines – Yahoo! News
Amarin raises funding for heart drug, partnership worries pull down shares
Label: Health(Reuters) – Biopharmaceutical company Amarin Corp Plc said it raised $ 100 million in non-equity financing that will help it form a sales force to launch its heart drug Vascepa, but disappointed investors hoping for a sale or partnership.
Amarin shares fell 22 percent in extended trade, after closing at $ 11.95 on the Nasdaq on Thursday.
“(Strategic) discussions are still quite active but at some point we’ve got to move forward,” CEO Joseph Zakrzewski said on a conference call with analysts.
Israel’s Calcalist financial daily said in November that the world’s largest generic drugmaker Teva Pharmaceutical Industries and British drugmaker AstraZeneca were both looking to buy the company.
The U.S. Food and Drug Administration in July approved Vascepa capsules alongside diet to reduce triglyceride levels — a blood fat that contributes to heart disease — in adult patients with severe hypertriglyceridemia.
Amarin said Thursday it will hire 250 to 300 sales professionals to launch Vascepa in the first quarter of 2013.
The decision to hire a sales force implied that Amarin is ready to go it alone, analyst Jon LeCroy of MKM Partners said, adding that this is being viewed negatively by investors.
“With the backing of a major pharmaceutical company, there will be sales reps available as well as more dollars to market the product. So the assumption would be that it could be a much bigger product if a bigger company sells it,” LeCroy said.
WAITING ON EXCLUSIVITY
Amarin had earlier indicated that the FDA decision on Vascepa’s marketing exclusivity would have an impact on whether the company gets acquired, forms a partnership on the drug, or sells the heart pill on its own.
Amarin is awaiting a decision from the regulator regarding a new chemical entity (NCE) status for Vascepa, which will grant the company marketing exclusivity for five years. The pill is also patent protected until 2030.
LeCroy said with an NCE most major pharmaceutical companies would be interested in Amarin, given that the status guarantees some minimum exclusivity compared with patents that can be challenged.
The company is planning to price Vascepa on par with GlazoSmithKline’s competing Lovaza, CEO Zakrzewski said on the call.
He added that reimbursement for the drug will be available to most managed care clients by the time of its launch.
The financing deal for the hybrid debt-like instrument was made with an investment fund managed by Pharmakon Advisors.
(Reporting By Vrinda Manocha and Balaji Sridharan in Bangalore; Editing by Don Sebastian and Anthony Kurian)
Health News Headlines – Yahoo! News
UK warned on debt ‘credibility’
Label: Business5 December 2012 Last updated at 14:28 ET
The UK’s failure to meet a key public debt target “weakens the credibility” of its top AAA credit rating, the Fitch ratings agency has said.
Debt will now not fall as a proportion of the country’s output until 2016-17, a year later than Chancellor George Osborne had targeted.
Fitch said that the Autumn Statement confirmed the scale of the challenge facing the UK.
In March, it said the UK’s AAA rating was under threat.
A cut to the credit rating would mean that the country is perceived as more risky to lend to, thereby raising the cost of borrowing from international investors.
The Office for Budget Responsibility, the independent body that makes economic forecasts for the government, announced that the UK will miss its debt target and the economy will contract by 0.1% this year – a big revision from the time of the Budget in March, when it said that the economy would grow 0.8% this year.
Growth forecasts for the next five years were also cut.
“We forecast gross general government debt to peak at 97% in 2015-16, approaching the upper limit of the level consistent with the UK retaining its AAA status,” Fitch said.
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“The government has chosen not to chase the supplementary target by deploying additional consolidation measures over the next two years. In our view, missing the target weakens the credibility of the UK’s fiscal framework, which is one of the factors supporting the [AAA] rating.”
It warned in March that it could downgrade the UK in the next few years if the government does not contain the level of public debt.
Fitch said it would formally review the UK’s rating after the next Budget in March 2013.
In February, rival agency Moody’s also warned that the UK’s credit rating may be cut in future, potentially increasing borrowing costs.
Confusion on borrowing
On borrowing figures, the chancellor said that debt would not begin to fall as a proportion of the country’s output until 2016-17, which is a year later than the government’s target.
Before the statement, many analysts had predicted that the budget deficit, which is the amount the government is having to borrow in the current year, would be higher than it was last year.
However, it is now forecast to fall from £121bn in 2011-12 to £108bn in 2012-13.
But there was some confusion about how that had been achieved, with shadow chancellor Ed Balls complaining about the full figures not being in the Mr Osborne’s statement.
BBC economics editor Stephanie Flanders said that the deficit figure had fallen because the government had decided to use the proceeds from the sale of licences to run 4G mobile phone services to reduce this year’s borrowing.
Without that, she said, the deficit would have risen “maybe by a couple of billion pounds”.
There was also a reduction in the deficit of £11.5bn in the current year as a result of the Asset Purchase Facility.
As a result of the Bank of England’s quantitative easing programme, the central bank currently owns a lot of the government’s debt.
If anybody else had lent money to the government it would have had to pay interest on those loans.
The government has now decided it should not be paying interest to the Bank of England, and the benefit of that has reduced the deficit and will continue to do so for the next four years.
BBC News – Business
Death toll from Philippine typhoon nears 300
Label: WorldNEW BATAAN, Philippines (AP) — Stunned parents searching for missing children examined a row of mud-stained bodies covered with banana leaves while survivors dried their soaked belongings on roadsides Wednesday, a day after a powerful typhoon killed nearly 300 people in the southern Philippines.
Officials fear more bodies may be found as rescuers reach hard-hit areas that were isolated by landslides, floods and downed communications.
At least 151 people died in the worst-hit province of Compostela Valley when Typhoon Bopha lashed the region Tuesday, including 78 villagers and soldiers who perished in a flash flood that swamped two emergency shelters and a military camp, provincial spokeswoman Fe Maestre said.
Disaster-response agencies reported 284 dead in the region and 14 fatalities elsewhere from the typhoon, one of the strongest to hit the country this year.
About 80 people survived the deluge in New Bataan with injuries, and Interior Secretary Mar Roxas, who visited the town, said 319 others remained missing.
“These were whole families among the registered missing,” Roxas told the ABS-CBN TV network. “Entire families may have been washed away.”
The farming town of 45,000 people was a muddy wasteland of collapsed houses and coconut and banana trees felled by Bopha’s ferocious winds.
Bodies of victims were laid on the ground for viewing by people searching for missing relatives. Some were badly mangled after being dragged by raging flood waters over rocks and other debris. A man sprayed insecticide on the remains to keep away swarms of flies.
A father wept when he found the body of his child after lifting a plastic cover. A mother, meanwhile, went away in tears, unable to find her missing children. “I have three children,” she said repeatedly, flashing three fingers before a TV cameraman.
Two men carried the mud-caked body of an unidentified girl that was covered with coconut leaves on a makeshift stretcher made from a blanket and wooden poles.
Dionisia Requinto, 43, felt lucky to have survived with her husband and their eight children after swirling flood waters surrounded their home. She said they escaped and made their way up a hill to safety, bracing themselves against boulders and fallen trees as they climbed.
“The water rose so fast,” she told AP. “It was horrible. I thought it was going to be our end.”
In nearby Davao Oriental, the coastal province first struck by the typhoon as it blew from the Pacific Ocean, at least 115 people perished, mostly in three towns that were so battered that it was hard to find any buildings with roofs remaining, provincial officer Freddie Bendulo and other officials said.
“We had a problem where to take the evacuees. All the evacuation centers have lost their roofs,” Davao Oriental Gov. Corazon Malanyaon said.
The International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies issued an urgent appeal for $ 4.8 million to help people directly affected by the typhoon.
The sun was shining brightly for most of the day Wednesday, prompting residents to lay their soaked clothes, books and other belongings out on roadsides to dry and revealing the extent of the damage to farmland. Thousands of banana trees in one Compostela Valley plantation were toppled by the wind, the young bananas still wrapped in blue plastic covers.
But as night fell, however, rain started pouring again over New Bataan, triggering panic among some residents who feared a repeat of the previous day’s flash floods. Some carried whatever belongings they could as they hurried to nearby towns or higher ground.
After slamming into Davao Oriental and Compostela Valley, Bopha roared quickly across the southern Mindanao and central regions, knocking out power in two entire provinces, triggering landslides and leaving houses and plantations damaged. More than 170,000 fled to evacuation centers.
As of Wednesday evening, the typhoon was over the South China Sea west of Palawan province. It was blowing northwestward and could be headed to Vietnam or southern China, according to government forecasters.
The deaths came despite efforts by President Benigno Aquino III’s government to force residents out of high-risk communities as the typhoon approached.
Some 20 typhoons and storms lash the northern and central Philippines each year, but they rarely hit the vast southern Mindanao region where sprawling export banana plantations have been planted over the decades because it seldom experiences strong winds that could blow down the trees.
A rare storm in the south last December killed more than 1,200 people and left many more homeless.
The United States extended its condolences and offered to help its Asian ally deal with the typhoon’s devastation. It praised government efforts to minimize the deaths and damage.
___
Associated Press writers Jim Gomez, Teresa Cerojano and Oliver Teves in Manila contributed to this report.
Asia News Headlines – Yahoo! News
U.S. agency backs Apple in essential patent battle
Label: TechnologyWASHINGTON (Reuters) – Google unit Motorola Mobility is not entitled to ask a court to stop the sale of Apple iPhones and iPads that it says infringe on a patent that is essential to wireless technology, the U.S. Federal Trade Commission said on Wednesday.
In June, Judge Richard Posner in Chicago threw out cases that Motorola, now owned by Google, and Apple had filed against each other claiming patent infringement. Both companies appealed.
In rejecting the Google case, Posner barred the company from seeking to stop iPhone sales because the patent in question was a standard essential patent.
This means that Motorola Mobility had pledged to license it on fair and reasonable terms to other companies in exchange for having the technology adopted as a wireless industry standard.
Standard essential patents, or SEPs, are treated differently because they are critical to ensuring that devices made by different companies work together.
Google appealed to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit. The FTC said in its court filing that Posner had ruled correctly.
The commission, which has previously argued against courts banning products because they infringe essential patents, reiterated that position on Wednesday.
“Patent hold-up risks harming competition, innovation, and consumers because it allows a patentee to be rewarded not based on the competitive value of its technology, but based on the infringer’s costs to switch to a non-infringing alternative when an injunction is issued,” the commission wrote in its brief.
The case is Apple Inc. and NeXT Software Inc. V. Motorola Inc. and Motorola Mobility Inc., in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit, no. 2012-1548, 2012-1549.
(Reporting By Diane Bartz)
Tech News Headlines – Yahoo! News
Brazilian architect Oscar Niemeyer dies, aged 104
Label: LifestyleRIO DE JANEIRO (Reuters) – Oscar Niemeyer, a towering patriarch of modern architecture who shaped the look of modern Brazil and whose inventive, curved designs left their mark on cities worldwide, died late on Wednesday. He was 104.
Niemeyer had been battling kidney ailments and pneumonia for nearly a month in a Rio de Janeiro hospital. His death was confirmed by a hospital spokesperson.
Starting in the 1930s, Niemeyer’s career spanned nine decades. His distinctive glass and white-concrete buildings include such landmarks as the United Nations Secretariat in New York, the Communist Party headquarters in Paris and the Roman Catholic Cathedral in Brasilia.
He won the 1988 Pritzker Architecture Prize, considered the “Nobel Prize of Architecture” for the Brasilia cathedral. Its “Crown of Thorns” cupola fills the church with light and a sense of soaring grandeur despite the fact that most of the building is underground.
It was one of dozens of public structures he designed for Brazil’s made-to-order capital, a city that helped define “space-age” style.
After flying over Niemeyer’s pod-like Congress, futuristic presidential palace and modular ministries in 1961, Yuri Gagarin, the Russian cosmonaut and first man in space, said “the impression was like arriving on another planet.”
In his home city of Rio de Janeiro, Niemeyer’s many projects include the “Sambadrome” stadium for Carnival parades. Perched across the bay from Rio is the “flying saucer” he designed for the Niteroi Museum of Contemporary Art.
The collection of government buildings in Brasilia, though, remain his most monumental and enduring achievement. Built from scratch in a wild and nearly uninhabited part of Brazil’s remote central plateau in just four years, it opened in 1960.
While the airplane-shaped city was planned and laid out by Niemeyer’s friend Lucio Costa, Niemeyer designed nearly every important government building in the city.
BECAME NATIONAL ICON
An ardent communist who continued working from his Copacabana beach penthouse apartment in Rio until days before his death, Niemeyer became a national icon ranking alongside Bossa Nova pioneer Tom Jobim and soccer legend Pelé.
His architecture, though, regularly trumped his politics.
Georges Pompidou, a right-wing Gaullist former French president, said Niemeyer’s design for the Communist Party of France headquarters in Paris “was the only good thing those commies ever did,” according to Niemeyer’s memoirs.
Prada, the fashion company known for providing expensive bags and wallets, thought the Communist Party building in Paris so cool it rented it for a fashion show.
Even the 1964-1985 Brazilian military government that forced Niemeyer into exile in the 1960s eventually found his buildings congenial to their dreams of making Brazil “the country of the future.”
His work is celebrated for innovative use of light and space, experimentation with reinforced concrete for aesthetic value and his self-described “architectural invention” style that produced buildings resembling abstract sculpture.
Initially influenced by the angular modernism of French-Swiss architect Le Cobusier, who worked with Niemeyer and Costa on a visit to Brazil in the 1930s, his style evolved toward rounded buildings that he said were inspired by the curves of Rio’s sunbathing women as well as beaches and verdant hills.
“That is the architecture I do, looking for new, different forms. Surprise is key in all art,” Niemeyer told Reuters in an interview in 2006. “The artistic capability of reinforced concrete is so fantastic – that is the way to go.”
Responding to criticism that his work was impractical and overly artistic, Niemeyer dismissed the idea that buildings’ design should reflect their function as a “ridiculous and irritating” architectural dogma.
“Whatever you think of his buildings, Niemeyer has stamped on the world a Brazilian style of architecture,” Dennis Sharp, a British architect and author of The Illustrated Encyclopedia of Architects and Architecture, once said of Niemeyer.
LIFELONG COMMUNIST
Niemeyer’s legacy is heavily associated with his communist views. He was a close friend of Cuba’s revolutionary leader Fidel Castro and an enemy of Brazil’s 21-year military dictatorship.
“There are only two communists left in the world, Niemeyer and myself,” Castro once joked.
Niemeyer remained politically active after returning to Brazil, taking up the cause of a militant and sometimes violent movement of landless peasants. He said in 2010 that he was a great admirer of Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, the former labor leader who was Brazil’s president from 2003 to 2010.
Niemeyer once built a house in a Rio slum for his former driver and gave apartments and offices as presents to others.
Despite his egalitarian views, Niemeyer had no illusions that his buildings were helping to improve social justice.
Far from the model city Niemeyer had envisioned, Brasilia today is in many ways the epitome of inequality. Planned for 500,000 people, the city is now home to more than 2.5 million and VIPs keep to themselves in fenced-in villas while the poor live in distant satellite towns.
“It seemed like a new era was coming, but Brazil is the same crap – a country of the very poor and the very rich,” he said in another Reuters interview in 2001.
In a 2010 interview in his office, he was quick to blame Costa for things many dislike about Brasilia, such as its rigid ordering into homogenous “hotel,” “government,” “residential” and even “mansion” and “media” districts that can make finding a newspaper or groceries a chore.
“I just did the buildings,” he said. “All that other stuff was Costa.”
Despite Niemeyer’s atheism, one of his first significant early works was a church built in homage to St. Francis, part of a complex of modern buildings in Belo Horizonte, Brazil.
That work won the confidence of the city’s mayor Juscelino Kubitschek. When he became president, he tapped Niemeyer to help realize the dream of opening up Brazil’s interior by moving the capital from coastal Rio to the empty plains of central Brazil.
Despite years of bohemian living, Niemeyer remained married for 76 years to Annita Baldo, his first wife. He married his second wife, long-time aide Vera Lucia Cabreira, in 2006 at the age of 99. She survives him, as do four grandchildren.
Niemeyer’s only daughter, an architect, designer and gallery owner, Anna Maria, died on June 6 at the age of 82.
(Additional reporting by Brian Ellsworth; Editing by Todd Benson and Kieran Murray)
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