Israel’s Lieberman says Palestinian peace accord impossible

JERUSALEM (Reuters) – Israel has no chance of signing a permanent peace accord with the Palestinians and should instead seek a long-term interim deal, the most powerful political partner of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said on Saturday.

The remarks by Avigdor Lieberman, an ultranationalist whose joint party list with Netanyahu narrowly won a January 22 election while centrist challengers made surprise gains, seemed designed to dampen expectations at home and abroad of fresh peacemaking.

A spring visit to Israel and the Palestinian territories by U.S. President Barack Obama, announced this week, has stirred speculation that foreign pressure for a diplomatic breakthrough could build – though Washington played down that possibility.

In a television interview, ex-foreign minister Lieberman linked the more than two-year-old impasse to pan-Arab political upheaval that has boosted Islamists hostile to the Jewish state.

These include Hamas, rivals of U.S.-backed Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, who control the Gaza Strip and spurn coexistence with Israel though they have mooted extended truces.

“Anyone who thinks that in the center of this socio-diplomatic ocean, this tsunami which is jarring the Arab world, it is possible to arrive at the magic solution of a comprehensive peace with the Palestinians does not understand,” Lieberman told Israel’s Channel Two.

“This is impossible. It is not possible to solve the conflict here. The conflict can be managed and it is important to manage the conflict … to negotiate on a long-term interim agreement.”

Abbas broke off talks in late 2010 in protest at Israel’s settlement of the occupied West Bank. He angered Israel and the United States in November by securing a U.N. status upgrade that implicitly recognized Palestinian independence in all the West Bank, East Jerusalem and Gaza.

Israel insists it will keep East Jerusalem and swathes of West Bank settlements under any eventual peace deal. Most world powers consider the settlements illegal because they take up land seized in the 1967 Middle East war.

Lieberman, himself a West Bank settler, said the ball was “in Abu Mazen’s (Abbas’) court” to revive diplomacy.

Abbas has demanded Israel first freeze all settlement construction. With two decades gone since Palestinians signed their first interim deal with Israel, he has ruled out any new negotiations that do not solemnize Palestinian statehood.

Netanyahu’s spokesman Mark Regev noted that Lieberman, in the Channel Two interview, had said he was expressing his own opinion.

Asked how Netanyahu saw peace prospects for an accord with the Palestinians, Regev referred to a speech on Tuesday in which the conservative prime minister said that Israel, while addressing threats by its enemies, “must also pursue secure, stable and realistic peace with our neighbors”.

Netanyahu has previously spoken in favor of a Palestinian state, though he has been cagey on its borders and whether he would be prepared to dismantle Israeli settlements.

Lieberman’s role in the next coalition government is unclear as he faces trial for corruption. If convicted, he could be barred from the cabinet. Lieberman denies wrongdoing and has said he would like to regain the foreign portfolio, which he surrendered after his indictment was announced last year.

(Writing by Dan Williams; Editing by Stephen Powell)

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Beyonce, Jay-Z, Rihanna hang at Roc Nation brunch

LOS ANGELES (AP) — Jay-Z and Beyonce sat tightly with Solange. Kelly Rowland embraced Beyonce with a huge hug. And Rihanna spilled some of her drink laughing with Rowland.

Music’s top stars attended the annual pre-Grammy Roc Nation brunch Saturday at the Soho House.

Grammy nominee Miguel, Timbaland, Jill Scott and Kylie Mingoue also attended the exclusive event.

Jay-Z is one of six acts nominated for six awards at Sunday’s Grammys. Rihanna is up for three trophies, and Beyonce is nominated for one award.

The crowd Saturday was full of members of music industry, who mingled with performers like The-Dream, Jordin Sparks, Melanie Fiona, Diane Warren, Christina Milian, MC Lyte and Santigold.

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Egypt PM in hot water over “unclean breasts” remarks

CAIRO (Reuters) – Egypt‘s prime minister faces accusations of being out of touch with the country’s crisis after televised comments blaming rural infant sickness on mothers not washing their breasts.

Hisham Kandil, a former irrigation minister widely seen as a stolid technocrat, was speaking at a meeting with journalists broadcast on state television this week when he veered into a ramble on the “miseries” of life in rural Egypt.

“In my work, I’ve gone around the countryside,” he said. “There are villages in Egypt, in the 21st century, where children get diarrhoea … because the mothers who nurse them, out of ignorance, do not maintain personal cleanliness of their breasts.”

Recalling a visit to the Beni Suef area south of Cairo in 2004, he spoke of the dire conditions of village life. “There’s no water, there’s no sewerage,” he said. “The men go to the mosque … the women go down to the fields and get raped.”

He appeared to be responding to complaints about a series of attacks and rapes of political activists in Cairo in recent weeks, citing the case of a man who was caught on video being beaten and dragged naked by police.

“I don’t know Hamada (Saber), well, I know him like you do, but I am 99 percent sure he doesn’t pay his electricity bill,” the prime minister said of the victim of that videoed beating.

His remarks unleashed a storm of criticism, much of it reflecting a sense of economic and political malaise that has settled over the country since an uprising two years ago that toppled veteran autocratic President Hosni Mubarak.

Dina Abdel Fattah, a talk show host on the independent Tahrir channel questioned why the head of government had dwelt on the subject when Egypt was in a state of “darkness”.

At least 59 people died in 10 days of protests that started late last month over what demonstrators see as Islamist President Mohamed Mursi‘s attempts to monopolise power as well as broader economic and political grievances.

“Imagine. Our prime minister is talking about this today, when we have martyrs in the street, we have people getting killed every day, when we have entire provinces in a state of unrest,” Abdel Fattah said on her show.

Another television channel, Al Nahar, interviewed residents of Beni Suef voicing dismay at Kandil’s comments.

“It’s no good the prime minister talking this nonsense about women, good people, clean people, and ignoring all the other problems of the world,” one man said on the programme.

Since his election in June, Mursi, a member of the Muslim Brotherhood, has struggled to restore security and revive the ailing economy.

Small demonstrations continued on Friday, drawing thousands of protesters in Cairo and other cities including Tanta in the Nile Delta and Port Said on the Suez Canal.

Critics questioned Mursi’s appointment of Kandil in July, saying it was unclear whether he had the political or economic experience for the job.

“Instead of making offensive comments about poor village women and laying blame on them when God knows they are already suffering, he should be blaming himself for the failure of his government to find a proper solution to alleviate poverty, illiteracy and awful health schemes in villages,” said Iman Mahmoud, a 61-year-old housewife in Cairo.

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Spain’s “bad bank” rebuffs three investment funds

MADRID (Reuters) – Spain‘s so-called ‘bad bank’, Sareb, has rejected overtures from investment funds Cerebrus, Fortress and Centerbridge to enter into its capital because they were asking for advantages over other shareholders, a source with knowledge of the matter said on Saturday.

“They asked for privileges when it came to buying the assets, and Sareb rejected that offer,” the source, who spoke on condition of anonymity said. “Sareb has a commitment to treat all shareholders the same.”

Sareb declined to comment. None of the three funds could be reached for comment and neither the Bank of Spain nor the Economy Minister could confirm the matter.

Spain set up the bad bank to hive off rotten real estate assets dating from a property crash from lenders’ balance sheets as a condition of receiving around 40 billion euros ($ 54 billion) of European money to bail out ailing banks.

The head of Sareb, Belen Romana, sent a letter to the three funds on Friday declining their entry into the bad bank’s capital, but leaving the door open for further talks, Expansion newspaper reported on Saturday.

The funds wanted first choice on buying portfolios of finished buildings and on supplying services to the bad bank, the paper said.

Sareb took on 37 billion euros worth of troubled real estate assets at the end of December from four nationalized banks, including Bankia

(Reporting By Sonya Dowsett; Editing by Toby Chopra)

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Protests turn to street clashes across Egypt

CAIRO (AP) — Egyptian security forces backed by water cannons fired tear gas at rock-throwing protesters outside the presidential palace in Cairo on Friday while demonstrators clashed with riot police in cities across the country in marches against Islamist President Mohammed Morsi.

The protests are part of a wave of opposition-led demonstrations over the past two weeks that have frequently devolved into street clashes. The violence has left more than 70 people dead and hundreds wounded, and plunged the country into a fresh cycle of bloodshed and political turmoil.

Egypt‘s opposition is demanding Morsi form a new coalition government, open an investigation into the killings of protesters over the past months and give guarantees that upcoming parliamentary elections will be fair and free. They also want him to form a commission to amend the country’s newly adopted constitution, which was drafted by an Islamist-led panel and approved last December in a contentious referendum.

Some of the protesters go even further, demanding Morsi be removed from office. They also accuse the Muslim Brotherhood, the fundamentalist group from which Morsi hails, of monopolizing power and failing to deal with the country’s mounting woes.

Thousands took their demands to the streets in cities across the country on Friday, carrying Egyptian flags and pictures of slain protesters and chanting “down with the rule of the Guide,” referring to Brotherhood Supreme Guide Mohammed Badie, who critics allege is calling the shots for Morsi from behind the scenes.

At the presidential palace in Cairo, the scene of repeated violent clashes since late last year, protesters tried to remove the barbed wire at the front gate of the palace and fired flares at its perimeters. Riot police swiftly responded with water cannons and tear gas while protesters hurled stones.

Violence also broke out in Kafr el-Sheik, some 180 kilometers (110 miles) north of Cairo, where riot police clashed with protesters in front of the office of governor Saad el-Husseini, who is a member of the Muslim Brotherhood.

In the Mediterranean port city of Alexandria, protesters tore down a Brotherhood sign and burned it in front of the group’s office while security forces used tear gas to disperse demonstrators in front of the governor’s office.

Morsi and his allies accuse the opposition of trying to incite street violence to seize power after failing at the ballot box.

In a statement on Friday, Murad Ali, a spokesman for the Freedom and Justice party — the Muslim Brotherhood’s political arm — warned the opposition that it would be responsible for any acts of violence that occur during protests. He also called them “losers.”

The clashes over the past two weeks have fueled a sense that Egypt is coming unglued, while also raising concerns that the country could be hit by more — and greater — political violence.

Those worries sharpened after the assassination of a prominent anti-Islamist opposition leader in Tunisia on Wednesday, a killing that touched off a new wave of unrest there.

Tunisia was the birthplace of the region’s so-called Arab Spring uprisings in 2011 that brought an end to the rule of several autocrats including Egypt’s own Hosni Mubarak, clearing the way for Morsi’s election last summer. Egyptians have warily watched the events unfolding in Tunis, which many here look to as a bellwether for their own country.

Much of the public anxiety in Egypt following the killing in Tunis stems from religious edicts, known as fatwas, recently issued by extremist clerics calling for the killing of Morsi’s political opponents.

Egypt’s leading democracy advocate and opposition leader Mohamed ElBaradei sounded the alarm this week about the edicts.

The opposition says it will continue protests despite the fatwas, which the presidency and the government condemned as “terrorism.” Morsi called the rhetoric “hate speech cloaked by religion.”

Hamdeen Sabahi, a leader of the opposition National Salvation Front, said in a message posted on his Twitter account: “We will continue our peaceful struggle with the Egyptian people and revolutionary youth to continue our revolution.”

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Britney Spears considers long-term Las Vegas deal

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) – Pop star and former “X Factor” judge Britney Spears is in talks to sign a long-term contract to headline a show at a Las Vegas resort, Caesars Entertainment Corp. said on Friday.

“We can now confirm the company is actively engaged in discussions with Britney Spears‘ representatives regarding a potential headlining residency at Planet Hollywood Resort and Casino,” the company said in a statement.

Representatives for Spears were not immediately available for comment on Friday.

Caesars Entertainment, which owns casinos and resorts including Planet Hollywood, has hired some of the world’s top-selling artists for residencies at various Las Vegas sites.

Canadian singer Celine Dion has a three-year deal with Caesars Palace that is said to be worth $ 100 million. British singer Elton John also has a long-term commitment to perform at The Colosseum at Caesars Palace.

Singers Cher and Bette Midler had similar long-term deals at The Colosseum in recent years.

Spears, 31, shot to fame in the late 1990s with hits such as “… Baby One More Time” and has gone on to become one of the biggest pop figures of the 2000s.

She is waging a comeback after a turbulent few years in her life in which she lost custody of her children, entered rehab and shaved off her hair.

She landed a seat on “The X Factor” judging panel in May 2012, but left the show last month after one season. In the same week, she also split up with her fiancé Jason Trawick.

(Reporting By Piya Sinha-Roy and Eric Kelsey; Editing by Xavier Briand)

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Even Healthy Older Adults Hit Hard by Flu

Cold weather and seasonal flu go hand in hand, and while we have the groundhog to provide insight into the length of winter, no one can say for certain when the 2012-13 influenza season will taper off. In its most recent Flu View report, representing data obtained from Jan. 27 through Feb. 2, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention explains that although flu activity remained high throughout the nation, most areas reported a decrease in new cases of the illness.

Older Adults Age 65 and Over Hit Hardest by 2012-13 Influenza Season

In reviewing the laboratory-confirmed influenza hospitalizations graph provided by the CDC, the number of hospitalizations for those age 65 and older are three times that of the next highest age group. Dr. Lyn Finelli, a flu expert at the CDC, explained to NBCNews.com that this flu season’s rate of hospitalization for older adults is the highest it’s been since the agency began gathering such data in 2005.

Speaking to the number of deaths among people age 65 and over as a result of influenza and/or pneumonia, Finelli stated , “The deaths are way over the epidemic threshold,” and voiced the agency’s concern about these older members of the population in regard to influenza and its potential complications.

Finelli explained that even older adults who consider themselves generally fit and healthy have the potential to develop life-threatening complications from influenza due to underlying conditions.

CDC Recommendations to Prevent, Treat Influenza in those Age 65 and Older

The CDC continues to recommend that anyone age 6 months and older receive the flu vaccination. This is particularly important for baby boomers and seniors age 65 and older due to the increased risk of complications from influenza in this age group.

There are two vaccines available to those 65 years-of-age and older; the regular dose vaccination and a high-dose vaccination. The CDC does not prefer one of these types over the other. In theory, the high-dose vaccine is intended to provide a stronger immune response, but whether that occurs in reality is dependent on many factors. Talk with your health care provider to learn which vaccine he recommends.

If you suspect you have the flu — sudden onset of symptoms, cough, sore throat, fever or feverish with chills, tiredness, runny or stuffy nose, muscle/body aches — contact your health care provider immediately. You need not have all of the symptoms, and may not have a fever and still be ill with the flu.

There are two anti-viral medications your health care provider can prescribe, but they work best when taken within 48 hours of the symptoms first appearing. These anti-viral medications are intended to reduce the severity of the illness and potentially to prevent complications of influenza.

Research Finds that Older Adults Have Different and Fewer Antibodies Than Younger People

The peer-reviewed medical journal Science Translational Medicine published the results of research into the understanding of the antibody responses in older adults. The antibody response is the body’s method of fighting infection and also the portion of the system that develops a protective response following vaccination. Not only do older adults have fewer antibodies than their younger cohorts, but they have different types of antibodies. The number and types of antibodies decreases with age.

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Firms face horsemeat ‘disaster’

8 February 2013 Last updated at 11:12 ET

By Matthew Wall Business reporter, BBC News

The latest scandal surrounding horsemeat in processed food could be “disastrous” for the meat processing industry, retail analysts are warning.

Lost contracts with supermarkets “will undoubtedly cost them millions of pounds”, Neil Saunders of retail analyst Conlumino told the BBC.

“The loss of supply contracts could be disastrous for food suppliers.”

The Food Standards Agency now wants the industry to test all its processed beef products.

The British Meat Processors Association, whose members produce 80% of meat sold in the UK, said: “It’s too early to say what the impact will be on our industry. The BMPA is co-operating with the FSA [Food Standards Agency] to establish the facts, and to deal effectively with the issues.”

One supplier, meat processor Silvercrest, based in County Monaghan, Ireland, lost supply contracts with Tesco, Aldi and Co-operative supermarkets after the Food Safety Authority of Ireland (FSAI) found horse and pig DNA in burgers it supplied.

“It wouldn’t surprise me if there were redundancies,” said Mr Saunders.

A spokesperson for ABP Food Group, which owns Silvercrest, said: “We feel it would be inappropriate to comment at this stage.”

Testing regime

In a statement issued on Friday, the FSA said: “In addition to the widespread testing we are doing, we’ve instructed the industry to urgently carry out its own tests on processed beef products to see whether horsemeat is present.”

But this new testing regime could cost the industry millions of pounds.

Giving evidence to the Environment, Food & Rural Affairs select committee on 30 January, Tim Smith, Tesco’s group technical director revealed that the supermarket’s new DNA testing regime, introduced following the discovery of horsemeat in its value burgers, would cost it “£1m to £2m a year”.

Meanwhile, Tesco’s sales loss would be “a lot bigger than a million pounds” as a result of the scandal, he said.

But Richard Dodd of the British Retail Consortium, which represents 80% of the UK retail industry, told the BBC: “What we’re hearing from our members is that this [horsemeat] issue is not having an impact. People are clear that it isn’t a health issue, so it’s not producing a change in customer shopping habits.”

And Conlumino’s Neil Saunders agrees that the supermarkets are unlikely to be affected much by the scandal, since they can claim compensation from their suppliers.

“While it is highly likely that sales will have deteriorated in some food lines, such as value burgers, other categories may have benefitted, meaning that there is little net loss overall,” he said.

Traditional High Street butchers might even be benefiting from the horsemeat scandal, says Richard Stevenson, technical manager of the National Federation of Meat and Food Traders.

“Our members are telling us that they’re all getting more business since the Tesco burger issue, because most butchers know exactly where their meat has come from. You could argue that this issue has arisen as a direct result of the cheap food policy adopted by supermarkets.”

Findus, which had to withdraw its beef lasagne ready meals after some samples were found to contain 100% horsemeat, said on Friday that it had tested all its other beef products and found no evidence of contamination.

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South Africa outraged at gang rape of teenager

JOHANNESBURG (AP) — In a country where one in four women is raped and where months-old babies and 94-year-old grandmothers are sexually assaulted, citizens are demanding action after a teenager was gang-raped, sliced open from her stomach to her genitals, and left for dead on a construction site last week.

The 17-year-old lived long enough to identify one of her attackers, a 22-year-old. Police arrested him and said Thursday they have arrested a second suspect, aged 21. They promised more arrests soon.

“Kill them!” and “Cut off their penises,” were some of the demands voiced on talk show radio stations Thursday.

Every few months this African nation with the highest rate of rapes of babies and young girls in the world yells its outrage at a particularly brutal attack.

Last year, South Africans were shocked when village boys gang-raped a mentally ill 17-year-old with a mental age of 4. She was attacked by six boys, the youngest who was 10, in a crime that only came to light because the boys made a cellphone video of the rape and posted it on the Internet. It went viral.

Prof. Rachel Jewkes, a doctor heading the Women’s Research Unit of South Africa‘s Medical Research Council, said 37 percent of surveyed men in South Africa’s most populated province of Gauteng said they had raped a woman or child, according to a study. Seventy-five percent of them first raped a teenager, she said.

“It’s a social disaster,” she said. The number of “men who try to feel better about their past by trying to make out that what they did wasn’t serious or wasn’t rape is obviously huge and must be a huge obstacle to getting anything done — from police making arrests to decisions in the courtroom by magistrates and so forth.”

The outcry over Saturday’s rape in Bredasdorp, a Western Cape town known for its giant protea flowers, led President Jacob Zuma to vow Thursday “that government would never rest until the perpetrators and all those who rape and abuse women and children, are meted with the maximum justice that the law allows.”

The maximum sentence for rape in South Africa is life in prison. The death sentence has been abolished.

Zuma himself was accused of rape by the HIV-positive lesbian daughter of a close friend in 2005. Zuma said the sex was consensual and he was acquitted, but is unlikely to live down his comment in court that he had a shower afterward to cut the risk of acquiring AIDS.

In a study conducted by Jewkes in 2009, 62 percent of surveyed boys over age 11 said they believed that forcing someone to have sex was not an act of violence. One-third said girls enjoy being raped.

That study found one-quarter of South African women are raped but only one in 25 report it to the police. Of those who were not raped by a partner, one in 13 had never reported the rape, and many had been raped more than once, Jewkes said. That casts doubt on police statistics showing sexual crimes decreased from 70,514 in 2009 to 64,419 last year. Females make up half of South Africa’s population of 50 million.

Official statistics show less than 10 percent of reported sexual crimes result in a successful prosecution, another reason many are reluctant to report rape.

A British documentary, “Lost Girls of South Africa,” concludes girls here have a bigger chance of being raped than of completing high school.

Studies show nearly 90 percent of victims are raped by family members, friends or other people they know. Girls are not safe at home or at school, with many reports of teachers having sex with students anxious to get good examination results.

Many reasons have been given for South Africa suffering the highest incidence of rape in the world. This is a patriarchal society where many men believe they are entitled to sex. The mother of an 11-year-old girl raped by her father told a court that her husband said no man had a right to have sex with his child until he had her.

The brutality of the white apartheid regime often is blamed, with psychologists saying that humiliated men work out their anger on those nearest and most helpless, their families.

Pervasive poverty, which also disempowers men and forces children to sleep in one-room shacks with adults, also is blamed.

That excuse was angrily dismissed in a Twitter debate last weekend.

“No one can tell me that raping a 3-month baby or 87-year-old granny or burning a library or vandalizing a school is caused by poverty,” tweeted Zwelinzima Vavi, head of the Congress of South African Trade Unions. “Yes, apartheid humiliated, dehumanized and made people feel valueless – its existence in the past is no excuse for current moral degeneration.”

Eastern KwaZulu-Natal province last year set up day-care centers for elderly women after several were raped.

Perhaps the saddest comment came from one protesting grandmother outside a court where a man was accused of raping a 94-year-old.

“It’s becoming clear that our grandchildren and great-grandsons are targeting us and it is only stiff sentences like castration and death that will stop this from happening,” 68-year-old Thokozile Gcumisa was quoted as saying in The Sowetan newspaper. “We fear our own flesh and blood.”

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Martial arts drama kicks off Berlin film festival

BERLIN (Reuters) – The 2013 Berlin film festival kicks off on Thursday with the red carpet premiere of “The Grandmaster”, Hong Kong director Wong Kar Wai‘s martial arts period drama set in China at the time of the Japanese invasion in the 1930s.

Starring regular collaborator Tony Leung Chiu Wai as kung fu master Ip Man and Zhang Ziyi as his rival and friend Gong Er, the heavily stylized picture is a story of honor, principle, betrayal and forbidden love all set in a time of turmoil.

Wong, also president of the jury at the cinema showcase this year, said he was determined to get beneath the surface of martial arts in a way most films in the genre had not.

“‘Grandmaster’ is a film about kung fu. It tells you more than the skill,” he told reporters after a press screening and ahead of the opening night gala.

“It tells you more about these people, martial artists, the world of martial arts. What is their code of honor? What is their value? What is their philosophy?

“I hope this film can bring the audience a new perspective about martial arts, kung fu and also Chinese,” he added, wearing his trademark dark glasses and speaking in English.

The idea for “The Grandmaster” was first announced more than a decade ago and it took the notoriously slow filmmaker four years to make, involving rigorous training for both Leung and Zhang which both actors said changed them profoundly.

Leung’s character, which dominates the first part of the film, is based on a real-life master of the same name who developed the Wing Chun school of martial arts and counted Bruce Lee among his students.

Gong Er’s character gradually takes a central role, and her repressed longing for Ip Man brings to the fore Wong’s mastery of melancholy, which he showed so memorably in his best known film to date “In the Mood for Love” also starring Leung.

IRANIAN FILM DEFIES BAN

Leung, 50, said he started training for the part four years ago, and reportedly broke his arm early in the process.

“There is a spiritual side of kung fu and that side cannot be learned from books or by fact-finding,” he said. “It grows spontaneously. So that’s why I had to practice four years. You can only achieve that thing through practice.”

“The Grandmaster” marks the official start of 11 days of screenings, photocalls, interviews and parties across Berlin where hundreds of movies will be screened, reviewed and traded at a film market that accompanies the Berlinale.

Matt Damon, Anne Hathaway and Nicolas Cage are expected on the red carpet, as are European heavyweights Catherine Deneuve and Jude Law and Asian stars including Leung and Zhang.

In the main competition of 19 movies eligible for awards is “Promised Land”, about the controversial drilling technique for extracting gas known as “fracking” and starring Matt Damon directed by his “Good Will Hunting” collaborator Gus Van Sant.

Steven Soderbergh‘s “Side Effects” is in part a critique of the pharmaceutical industry and boasts Law, Channing Tatum and Catherine Zeta-Jones in the cast.

Soderbergh, an Oscar winner for his 2000 narcotics drama “Traffic”, has announced it will be his final big screen feature film, at least for the foreseeable future.

One of the most eagerly awaited pictures at the festival is “Closed Curtain”, co-directed by acclaimed Iranian director Jafar Panahi who made it in defiance of a 20-year ban on film making imposed by authorities at home.

Out of competition is 3D prehistoric animation comedy “The Croods”, featuring the voices of Cage and Ryan Reynolds, and “Dark Blood”, which River Phoenix was filming when he died aged 23 in 1993.

(Reporting by Mike Collett-White, editing by Paul Casciato)

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