French film wins Cannes' top prize

CANNES, France (AP) -- The French film "The Class," a frank tale about classroom life using real students and teachers at a junior high school, won top honors Sunday at the Cannes Film Festival.


Benicio del Toro won the best actor award for his role in the film "Che" at the Cannes Film Festival.

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Directed by Laurent Cantet, "The Class" ("Entre les Murs") was the first French film to win the main prize, the Palme d'Or, at Cannes since "Under Satan's Sun" in 1987. The docudrama was shot in a raw, improvisational style to chronicle the drama that unfolds over one school year.

The win was a unanimous decision among the nine-member Cannes jury, said Sean Penn, who headed the panel.

"The movie that we wanted to make had to resemble French society, had to be multifaceted, a bit teeming, complex, and had to sometimes portray frictions that the film didn't try to erase," Cantet said.

Italian films won the second-place grand prize and third-place jury prize. Matteo Garrone's "Gomorrah," a study of the criminal underworld in Naples, took the grand prize, while Paolo Sorrentino's "Il Divo," a lively portrait of former Premier Giulio Andreotti, won the jury award.

Benicio Del Toro won Cannes' best-actor prize for "Che," Steven Soderbergh's four-hour-plus epic about Latin American revolutionary Che Guevara. Presented as two films, "Che" follows Guevara and Fidel Castro's triumphant guerrilla campaign to overthrow Cuba's government in the late 1950s and Guevara's downfall and execution after trying to foment a similar rebellion in Bolivia in the 1960s.

Del Toro, who co-starred in Penn's "21 Grams," also won in a unanimous jury vote, Penn said.

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"I'd like to dedicate this to the man himself, Che Guevara," said Del Toro. He also thanked Soderbergh, "who got up every day, forced me to this. ... He was there pushing it, and he pushed all of us."

Soderbergh directed Del Toro to the supporting-actor Oscar for 2000's "Traffic."

Sandra Corveloni was chosen as best actress for "Linha de Passe," in which she plays the mother of four brothers struggling to make better lives for themselves in a Brazilian slum. It was her first role in a feature film.

Turkish filmmaker Nuri Bilge Ceylan was named best director for "Three Monkeys," which centers on a father who takes the rap for his employer's crime in exchange for financial support for his wife and son, only to have the scheme backfire amid bitter repercussions.

Belgian siblings Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne, two-time winners of the Palme d'Or, received the screenplay prize for "Lorna's Silence," about an immigrant woman who enters a sham marriage to gain Belgian citizenship.

The prize for a film by a first-time director went to British filmmaker Steve McQueen's "Hunger," set at a Northern Ireland prison where IRA volunteer Bobby Sands and other inmates seeking Irish independence staged a hunger strike in 1981.

The Cannes jury awarded special prizes to Clint Eastwood, who directed the competition film "Changeling," and Catherine Deneuve, who appeared in two films at Cannes this year.

Eastwood was shut out for key prizes with "Changeling," his warmly received missing-child drama starring Angelina Jolie.

Eastwood, who delivered two best-picture and director Academy Award recipients with "Unforgiven" and "Million Dollar Baby," has never won top honors at Cannes after five times in competition there since 1985.

Jury president Penn won the best-actor Oscar for Eastwood's "Mystic River," which was shut out for prizes at Cannes five years ago.

"There was a field of such powerful, emotional, moving movies, performances. There was so many times that we thought, it just can't get better," Penn said.

Critics judged the Cannes lineup more harshly, however. While Cannes presented few outright bombs this time, critics found the films a bit tepid.

Last year's competition included such films as Joel and Ethan Coen's "No Country for Old Men," which went on to win the best-picture Academy Award, and Marjane Satrapi and Vincent Paronnaud's animated coming-of-age tale "Persepolis," which was nominated for the animation Oscar.

A film from Kazakhstan, Sergey Dvortsevoy's "Tulpan," won a secondary competition called "Un Certain Regard." "Tulpan" is the story of an aspiring shepherd on the isolated Kazakh steppes who must wed before he can enter his chosen trade but is refused by the only prospective bride because she thinks his ears are too big.

Bosnian director Aida Begic's "Snow," a drama about villagers struggling with the decision to leave their war-ravaged town, won top honors in another Cannes competition overseen by critics.

After the awards ceremony, the festival closed with the premiere of Barry Levinson's "What Just Happened?", starring Robert De Niro, Bruce Willis and Penn in the tale of a fading Hollywood producer trying to rejuvenate his career amid personal and professional crises.

"What Just Happened?" came full circle: A year ago, Levinson and his collaborators were at Cannes filming scenes for the movie.

Walkman strikes the right note

(CNET) -- The Sony NWZ-A720 Walkman series is a subtle evolution of the NWZ-A810 series we enjoyed in 2007. This year, Sony is treating us with a larger screen and a more assertive design, offered in 4GB ($149), 8GB ($199), and 16GB ($299).
Given Sony's track record with curvy, rounded designs, the Sony NWZ-A720 is refreshingly square.
Measuring 2 inches by 3.75 inches by 0.4 inch, it has a metallic body and a 2.4-inch screen.
The NWZ-A720 is a little larger than its predecessor, but it maintains a slim, pocketable profile.
The circular four-way navigation pad found on last year's Sony NWZ-A810 has turned into a more solid-feeling square on the A720, flanked by two small option and menu buttons.
All other buttons are confined to the right side of the player, including a rocker switch for volume control and a hold switch. The bottom of the A720 Walkman features a headphone output and proprietary USB connection.
Features
The Sony NWZ-A720 is stocked with features, including music, photo, and video playback. On the audio end of things, Sony is continuing its support for MP3, AAC, WMA, WAV, and DRM-protected subscription music files.
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In typical Sony style, the restrained design of the music playback screen betrays the awe-inspiring music enhancement technology working behind the scenes, such as a 5-band EQ, Clear Bass, Clear Stereo, DSEE high-frequency restoration, and dynamic normalization.
With its 2.4-inch QVGA LCD and excellent video battery life, the Sony NWZ-A720 is the most video-worthy Walkman we've seen. Sony offers limited video format compatibility, however, including MPEG-4 and H.264 sized at a strict 320x240 ratio. Fortunately, the popularity of the iPod and video podcasts has made the QVGA MPEG-4 file format one of the most abundant on the Web.
The Sony NWZ-A720 is a solid player with plenty to brag about, but the exclusion of features such as an FM radio, voice recording, and memory expansion is worth keeping in mind as you compare the Walkman with its competition. You should also know that Sony offers an identical-looking version of this player (the Sony NWZ-A820 series) which includes built-in Bluetooth audio streaming, at an increased price.
Performance
Year after year, Sony's MP3 players demonstrate some of the highest standards for audio quality. Even at its factory setting, the Sony NWZ-A720 radiates with fidelity that just gets better as each one of its many sound-enhancement features activate.
Listening through the excellent pair of included Sony EX in-ear headphones, the rattling saxophones of Moondog's "Dog Trot" were vibrant and easy to pick out in the stereo soundstage. Renowned for its buttery bass performance, the Clear Bass enhancement EQ feature perfectly sweetened the rolling dub synth notes of Squarepusher's "Port Rhombus" with no noticeable distortion.
Videos appeared bright, crisp, and colorful on the Sony NWZ-A720. The Walkman's screen is 0.4 inch larger than the screen found on the third-generation iPod Nano, and it shares a similarly impressive pixel density and sharp picture quality. Videos can be rotated between landscape and portrait view on the Sony NWZ-A720, and audio and video files are automatically bookmarked when the player is stopped or shut down.
Sony rates the NWZ-A720's battery life at an impressive 36 hours of audio playback and 10 hours of video. We'll update this review with our CNET Labs battery results once testing is complete.
Final thoughts
The Sony NWZ-A720 Walkman is an unquestionably great series of MP3 players, however, as a competitor to the iPod Nano it faces steep competition. Creative's Zen MP3 player, for instance, offers a larger screen, an FM radio, voice recording, and memory expansion, while Microsoft's Zune boasts coveted features such as integrated podcast management and built-in Wi-Fi.
Sony is clearly king of the hill when it comes to sound quality, but users seeking a more well-rounded MP3 player have plenty to choose from.

Toss your fridge, save money

(This Old House) -- You've probably been pining for that energy-efficient fridge for awhile (especially considering if your current model was built before 1993, it costs at least double to run than new Energy Star-rated models of the same size), but throwing away your old one isn't exactly eco-friendly.
To address the problem, the Department of Energy has announced its new Recycle My Old Fridge Campaign.
Check out RecycleMyOldFridge.com to figure out how much your inefficient current fridge is costing you, compare those costs to an Energy Star appliance, find a recycling program in your area along with contact details, and enter the Recycle My Old Fridge Video Challenge for a chance to win a trip for two to Washington, DC.
The campaign was launched in conjunction with new Energy Star guidelines released April 28, which state all standard-sized refrigerators must be 20 percent more efficient than the federal standard to qualify. (Under the old system, fridges only had to be 15 percent more efficient.)
Interesting facts:
• If you ditch your pre-1993 fridge, you'll save enough on energy costs to buy coffee for nearly 80 days. This Old House: Hire energy auditor
• If every American home replaced its pre-1993 fridge with an Energy Star model, we would prevent annual greenhouse gas emissions equivalent to those of more than 8.3 million cars.
• If everyone who buys a new refrigerator in 2008 chooses an Energy Star model over a non-qualified one, it would save $92 million each year in energy bills. This Old House: Shrink energy bills
• Refrigerators qualified under the new Energy Star guidelines use less energy than a 75-watt light bulb left on full time. This Old House: Energy saving bulbs
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If you're ready to take part in the program, here are a few Energy Star fridges for you to consider:
• LG's new 4-Door Refrigerator (set to be released this month) has two refrigerator doors at eye level and two bottom freezer drawers, the top for everyday items and the second for longer-term storage. The unit also has a nearly 1-foot-high ice and water dispenser. It retails for between $3,199 and $3,499.
• Available in stainless steel, black, and white, a side-by-side refrigerator from Electrolux features Wave-Touch Electronic Controls, which light up at a slight touch and fade away after a choice is made for an uncluttered display.
Other highlights include a 9-inch-tall water and ice dispenser and an alarm system that activates if there is a power failure, the door is left ajar, or the internal temperature rises above 56 degrees for 20 minutes. It retails for between $2,199 and $2,999.
• French door bottom freezer refrigerators are gaining in popularity, and this is the first model GE is offering for the mass market. With a 26-cubic-foot interior, it isn't lacking in storage space, and a dual-evaporator system controls air separately in the fresh-food and freezer compartments. Without an ice and water dispenser, it retails for between $1,599 and $1,799.

Giant 'telescope' links London, New York

LONDON, England (CNN) -- As the first splinters of sunlight spread their warmth on the south bank of the River Thames on Thursday, it became clear that after more than a century, the vision of Victorian engineer Alexander Stanhope St. George had finally been realized.

The Telectroscope lets Londoners and New Yorkers see each other in real time.

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In all its optical brilliance and brass and wood, there stood the Telectroscope: an 11.2-meter-(37 feet) long by 3.3-meter-(11 feet) tall dream of a device allowing people on one side of the Atlantic to look into its person-size lens and, in real time, see those on the other side via a recently completed tunnel running under the ocean. (Think 19th-century Webcam. Or maybe Victorian-age video phone.)
And all the credit goes to British artist Paul St. George. If he had not been rummaging through great-grandpa Alexander's personal effects a few years ago, the Telectroscope might still exist only on paper, hidden away deep inside some old box.
But fortunately, St. George could not bear that thought and thus decided he should be the one to finish what his great-grandfather had started. It was quite simply the right thing to do. Plus, it would make a pretty cool public art exhibit. Send us your videos, images or stories
During the twilight hours Tuesday, massive dirt-covered metal drill bits miraculously emerged -- one by the Thames near the Tower Bridge and the other on Fulton Ferry Landing by the Brooklyn Bridge in New York -- completing the final sections of great-grandfather Alexander's transatlantic tunnel.
The drills were removed Wednesday night and replaced with identical Telectroscopes at both ends, allowing Londoners and New Yorkers to wake up Thursday, look over to the far and distant shore and stare at each other for a while (the telescope-like contraption permits visual but not vocal communication).
Of course, only part of this story is true.
St. George is an artist in Britain who does have a grandfather -- minus the great prefix -- named Alexander.
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And the trans-Atlantic tunnel is really a trans-Atlantic broadband network rounded off on each end with HD cameras, according to Tiscali, an Italian Internet provider handling the technical side of the project.
As for the Telectroscope, well, it was a fanciful idea that, according to St. George, came about from a typo made by a 19th-century reporter who misspelled Electroscope, a device used to measure electrostatic charges - as Telectroscope.
"The journalist also misunderstood what it was about and wrote in the article that it was a device for the suppression of absence," St. George said. "The accidental hope captured their imagination, and lots of people at the end of the 19th century thought it was a great idea."
The Telectroscope captured St. George's imagination five years ago, when he began pondering how to do a project on the childhood fantasy of digging a hole to the opposite side of the Earth. And because the artist also happens to have an expertise in Victorian chronophotography -- a precursor to cinematography -- he had a slight idea of where to look for the proper equipment.
"We all have that idea in our head if we could make a tunnel to the other side of the Earth," St. George said."But we are not all crazy enough to actually try and do it."
St. George was crazy enough to actually try and do it, but he realized he could not do the digging alone. So about two years ago, he pitched the idea to Artichoke, the British arts group responsible for taking the Sultan's Elephant -- a 42-ton mechanical creature -- for a stroll through central London in 2006. The company was immediately taken by St. George's idea.
"The whole thing is about seeing what is real and what isn't real and how the world is," said Nicki Webb, a co-founder of Artichoke. "Is it nighttime when we are in daytime, and does it look familiar to us or not?"
When the sun illuminated the lens of the Telectroscope next to the Thames, it was, of course, still nighttime in New York. So the screen inside the scope broadcast back only an empty sidewalk silently framed by the Brooklyn Bridge and the Manhattan skyline.
But then something miraculous occurred.
A police officer and a street cleaner walked into the frame. Stopped. And waved.
The Telectroscope will be on display and open to the public 24 hours a day in London and New York until June 15. Artichoke is arranging requests to synchronize special reunions between friends and family or, the company hopes, maybe even a marriage proposal.

Demand grows for remote-controlled drones on front lines

WASHINGTON (CNN) -- The demands of wars in Iraq and Afghanistan are behind a new push by the Pentagon to increase the ranks of one of its most tireless fighting machines: remote-controlled attack aircraft called Unmanned Aerial Vehicles, or UAVs.

U.S. soldiers in Iraq prepare to launch an RQ-7B Shadow drone over Diyala province in February.

The U.S. military in recent months has doubled its squadrons of the small, quiet and deadly drones, which are operated by pilots in the United States.
Gen. David Petraeus, the top U.S. commander in Iraq, praised the work of the Predator UAVs flying over Baghdad.
"I think there's some path-breaking work ongoing here," Petraeus said.
Yet Defense Secretary Robert Gates said last month that it's "been like pulling teeth" to get more UAVs into the air over Iraq and Afghanistan. He established a task force to speed up the process.
"Unmanned systems cost much less and offer greater loiter times than their manned counterparts, making them ideal for many of today's tasks," Gates told Air War College graduates last month. Watch drones blast unsuspecting targets »
CNN has obtained previously classified video of the Air Force's newest heavily armed unmanned warplane with the grim moniker "The Reaper," which is essentially a Predator on steroids.
The newly declassified video shows a 500-pound bomb slamming into a suspected Taliban bunker in southern Afghanistan this year.
Another video clip shows a 500-pound bomb, aimed and fired by a pilot at Creech Air Force Base in the Nevada desert, striking two insurgents in Afghanistan as they try to escape on a motorcycle.
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"It flies higher. It flies faster. It carries more of a weapons load," said Lt. Gen. Norman Seip, commander of the 12th Air Force at Davis-Monthan Air Force Base, Arizona. "They're flying long, they are flying hard and they are making a big impact."
The CIA began using unmanned drones with cameras in the early 1990s, when Gates was the CIA director.
"After 27 years of experience as an intelligence professional, I had seen many agents place themselves in harm's way to collect information in some of the world's most dangerous and inaccessible environments," Gates said in his Air War College address. He welcomed the UAVs as a "far less risky and far more versatile means of gathering data."
The addition of Hellfire missiles to the original "Predator" spy drone just after September 11, 2001, gave it the ability to live up to its name.
Gates said the Pentagon now has 5,000 UAVs in service -- 25 times the number before the September 11 attacks.
The Air Force recently announced that it can now keep 24 UAVs in the air at all times, putting it two years ahead of its goal.
"But in my view, we can do -- and we should do -- more to meet the needs of men and women fighting in the current conflicts while their outcome may still be in doubt," Gates said.
Gates said he was concerned the military was "not moving aggressively" to get more UAVs to the battlefield.
"I've been wrestling for months to get more intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance assets into the theater," he said. "Because people were stuck in old ways of doing business, it's been like pulling teeth."
The task force, created last month, includes representatives from all four branches of the military. It has a short deadline, he said.
The biggest challenge may be finding and training men and women to pilot the growing fleet of UAVs.
"All this may require rethinking long-standing service assumptions and priorities about which missions require certified pilots and which do not," Gates said.
Critics argue that any aircraft carrying weapons should only be flown by certified pilots.
The Air Force has reduced manpower demands by letting pilots in the United States operate the planes through satellite links supported by ground crews closer to the battlefield.
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The Air Force has reassigned pilots from other aircraft, and the Air National Guard has also accelerated its Predator commitment in five states, the Air Force said.
It will establish a second Predator training squadron and a Predator weapons instructor course in early 2009, the Air Force said.

6 killed, 1,000 hurt in China aftershock

CHENGDU, China (CNN) -- A powerful 6.0-magnitude aftershock hit China's Sichuan province Sunday, reportedly destroyed more than 70,000 homes in the region where at least 60,000 people were killed by a powerful earthquake on May 12.

A quake survivor who lost her home looks out from her tent in Yongan, China, on Sunday.

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State media said at least six people died and more than 1,000 were hurt as a result of the latest seismic jolt, which came as Chinese officials warned that 69 dams in the province damaged in the original quake were in danger of bursting their banks.
Shaanxi experienced the highest death toll as a result of the aftershock, with four people losing their lives. One each died in Sichuan and Gansu.
The aftershock damaged more than 200,000 other homes, according to state media. It also damaged another dam, cutting off several more roads in the region.
Mudslides and rockslides caused by the quake and aftershocks created a lake to form in southwest Sichuan. Authorities are worried that the barriers could burst and cause massive flooding, the Xinhua news agency said.
The nearly 2,000 police officers and soldiers sent to the lake planned to use dynamite to break down part of the barriers in an effort to control the flow of water, which was rising.
Sichuan has experienced dozens of aftershocks since a devastating 7.9-magnitude earthquake on May 12.
But Sunday's aftershock was the strongest since a 5.8-magnitude shook the region a day after the initial quake.
The aftershock was felt in Chengdu, one of the largest cities in Sichuan province and about 150 miles from the epicenter of the aftershock. A CNN employee, on the 24th floor of a high-rise hotel, reported that the building swayed.
Meanwhile, China's top economic planning agency urged oil and power companies to make sure there are enough supplies for earthquake-hit areas and for the Beijing Olympic Games in August, The Associated Press reported.
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The National Development and Reform Commission said coal production should resume as quickly as possible in Sichuan province, which accounts for 4 percent of the country's coal production, AP reported.
The agency also said the country's top two oil producers -- China Petroleum & Chemical Corp., or Sinopec, and PetroChina -- should ensure fuel production, especially diesel for the summer, according to AP.
On Saturday, when China's Premier Wen Jiabao gave United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon a dramatic look at the damage, a strong aftershock shook the town they were in. Watch Ban Ki-moon's tour of damage »
Meanwhile, the death toll from this month's earthquake in China reached 62,664, a government official said Sunday. Another 23,775 are still missing. Watch one mother's daily quest for her missing son »
At the Sunday news conference, a civil affairs ministry official said rescue workers have pulled alive 6,537 people from the rubble of the May 12 earthquake.
The earthquake has left more than 5,000 children without their parents and more than 4,000 elderly without caregivers, China's state-run news agency said Sunday.
A Water Ministry official said at the same conference that 69 dams are in danger of bursting in Sichuan province. Watch a report on dangerous quake-made lakes and dams »
Since the quake struck, workers have made several dramatic rescues. But the numbers have dwindled in recent days as time has passed. And continued rain in the coming days threatened to make relief efforts more difficult.
On Friday, rescue workers pulled an 80-year-old paraplegic man from the rubble of his home on Friday, 11 days after the quake, state media reported Sunday.
The man, Xiao Zhihu, had been trapped for nearly 266 hours.
The beam of Xiao's house in Mianzhu City in Sichuan province collapsed during the quake, trapping him, China's state-run television CCTV said.
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The station said Xiao's wife could not go and call for help. She brought him food until he was found and freed by rescue crews Friday.
The government estimates that 45 million people, mostly in Sichuan province, were affected by the earthquake and that 5 million were left homeless.

Boeing 747 splits in two on take off

BRUSSELS, Belgium (AP) -- A large cargo plane crashed at the end of a runway and split in two while trying to take off Sunday at Brussels airport, authorities said.

The plane was about to depart for a scheduled flight to Bahrain when it crashed.

Four of the five crew members on board the Boeing 747 were slightly injured and were hospitalized, said Jan Van der Cruysse, spokesman at Brussels Airport.
"The plane is very seriously damaged," he said. The aircraft cracked in two after it crashed at the end of runway 220, which lies very close to a rail line and houses.
Rail services to and from the airport were suspended as a safety precaution, however the crash did not affect other flights at the airport, Van der Cruysse said.
Francis Vermeiren, mayor of the nearby town of Zaventem, said the plane did not catch on fire when it crashed after attempting to take off. Vermeiren was coordinating rescue efforts at the airport. Watch shattered plane straddle end of runway »
"The plane is not on fire but it has split into two," he told VRT radio.
Firefighters coated the wings of the plane with special fire retardant foam as a precaution because the plane was still full of jet fuel, the mayor said.
He said the plane was on a scheduled flight to Bahrain. It was not known what cargo the plane was carrying.
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Vermeiren said the pilot told rescue authorities he heard a large noise while trying to take off just after midday. It was not yet clear what caused the crash.
The plane is owned by Kalitta Air, a cargo carrier based at Willow Run Airport near Ypsilanti, Michigan, and makes regular flights from Brussels, officials said. A person who answered the telephone at Kalitta Air said Sunday morning that no one was immediately available to comment.