Crash

Rick Cabot
Rick Cabot (Brendan Fraser) is the white District Attorney of Los Angeles. He and his wife Jean (Sandra Bullock), are carjacked by Anthony and Peter, both of whom are black. Subsequently the Brentwood resident tries to save his political career by reassuring voters that he is racially sensitive. His character is never depicted as openly bigoted, making his racial stance ambiguous.

Jean Cabot
Jean Cabot (Bullock) is Rick's wife, whose racial prejudices escalate after the carjacking. At the end of the film, following an accident in her home, she realizes that the person who is the kindest and most helpful to her is Maria, her Hispanic maid, while her snobby friends are too busy with shallow pursuits (such as getting a massage) to help her out.

Anthony
Anthony (Chris "Ludacris" Bridges) is an African-American inner-city car thief who steals vehicles for a bigoted chop shop owner. He believes that society is unfairly biased against blacks, and at one point in the film he justifies his actions by saying he would never hurt another black person. However, Anthony tells Peter to shoot a black man, Cameron, after they try to carjack his car and he fights back. A disgusted Cameron kicks Anthony out of his car and says "You embarrass me. You embarrass yourself." Towards the end of the movie, Anthony steals a van which - unknown to him at the time - was full of trafficked people from South East Asia. He frequently refers to these immigrants as Chinamen, but when the the owner of the chop shop offers him $500 per head with the intention to sell them off as slaves, he refuses the money and releases all of them out onto the Asian district of LA in the closing scenes of the movie. Anthony gives them all of the money that was in his pocket – $40.

Peter Waters
Peter Waters (Larenz Tate) is Anthony's friend and partner in crime. He is also Detective Waters' younger brother. Like Anthony, he is black, but he humorously scoffs at Anthony's paranoia over racism. He also likes the Los Angeles Kings hockey team. Peter is shot to death by Officer Hansen, who picks him up in the valley hours after their failed carjacking of Cameron's SUV and mistakenly shoots him after assuming he is drawing a gun. In reality he was reaching into his pocket to show the cop a figure of Saint Christopher, identical to the one Officer Hansen had stuck to his dashboard.

Graham Waters
Graham Waters (Don Cheadle) is an African American detective in the Los Angeles Police Department. He is disconnected from his poor family, which consists of his drug-addicted mother and criminal younger brother. He promises his mother that he will find his younger brother, but he is preoccupied with a case concerning a suspected racist white cop who shot a corrupt black cop. Flanagan (William Fichtner) an assistant district attorney, offers Graham the chance to further his career in exchange for withholding evidence that could possibly have helped the white cop's case. Flanagan also tries to convince Graham that the black community needs to see the black cop as a hero, and not as a drug dealer, as Graham suspects that he may have been. Graham is both offended and opposed, and is ready to storm out, when Flanagan mentions that there is a warrant out for Graham's brother's arrest, and that this is his third felony, which carries a life sentence in the state of California. Graham makes a very difficult personal decision to withhold evidence and possibly corrupt a case in order to have the District Attorney forget about his brother. That brother is eventually revealed to be Peter, the hitchhiker who is killed by Officer Hansen.

Ria
Ria (Jennifer Esposito) is a Latina detective, as well as Graham's partner and girlfriend. When a phone call from Graham's mother interrupts his sexual romp with Ria, Ria becomes upset with Graham for being disrespectful towards his mother and subsequently showing himself to be racially insensitive towards Hispanics.

Officer John Ryan
Officer John Ryan (Matt Dillon) is a bigoted white police officer who physically molests Christine, a woman with African-American heritage, under the pretense of searching for a weapon after pulling over her vehicle. This causes his partner, Officer Hansen, to believe his partner has racist tendencies. Meanwhile, Ryan is trying to get help for his father, who possibly suffers from prostate cancer but has been diagnosed with a bladder infection, despite the ineffectiveness of treatment. His anger manifests in prejudice, as is evident when he indicates a racist attitude towards his father's doctor's secretary. His racial prejudices seem to stem from the destructive impact that local affirmative action policies had on his father's business. After Officer Hansen requests solo patrol, Ryan is partnered with a Hispanic-American with whom he seems to get along. Ryan later puts his own life on the line to save Christine, the woman he pulled over earlier, from certain death in a fiery car wreck.

Officer Tom Hansen
Officer Tom Hansen (Ryan Phillippe) is Officer Ryan's partner who is disgusted by his partner's racism and the city's inaction. He asks to be reassigned, and when he fails to get another partner, Hansen accepts a solo patrol vehicle. Remembering Cameron from the previous night's incident, Hansen saves Cameron during his confrontation with the police. However, he later picks up a hitchhiker who turns out to be Peter. They engage in a racially tense conversation, and when Peter reaches for what Hansen suspects is a weapon, Hansen draws his gun and shoots Peter. Hansen dumps the body and burns his car in an attempt to hide evidence, shocked at his folly.

Lieutenant Dixon
Lieutenant Dixon (Keith David) is Officers Ryan and Hansen's shift Lieutenant. He is African American. When Hansen requests to change partners, Dixon states that doing so because of Officer Ryan's racism will reflect poorly on their unit, and Dixon in particular for commanding him. Furthermore, Dixon explains that all the work he did to get a ranking position in an environment as racist as the LAPD will backfire on him personally if Hansen gives this reason for changing partners. He suggests that Hansen ride in a solo car for reasons of "uncontrollable flatulence" as a means of getting away from Officer Ryan and not making Dixon look bad for supervising Ryan.

Cameron Thayer
Cameron Thayer (Terrence Howard) is a black television director. He witnesses Officer Ryan molesting his wife and later realizes that the producers of his television show propagate racist stereotypes about black people. In an emotional moment, he fights off Anthony and Peter when they try to steal his car, takes away Anthony's gun, and argues fiercely with armed white police officers. Just when it is very likely that he will be shot to death, Officer Hansen intervenes on his behalf and prevents any outbreak of violence.

Christine Thayer
Christine Thayer (Thandie Newton) is Cameron's wife. She is molested by Officer Ryan after she and Cameron are pulled over. She becomes furious with her husband because he does not act to defend her. The two insult each other over their upbringings – as both Cameron and Christine have grown up in more privileged environments than many other African Americans. The next day she is trapped in an overturned car due to a car accident and, by a twist of fate, Officer Ryan is the man who willingly endangers himself to save her life.

Thandie Newton (Christine) and Matt Dillon (Sergeant Ryan) in a dramatic scene of Crash.

Daniel Ruiz
Daniel Ruiz (Michael Peña) is a Mexican-American locksmith who faces discrimination from Jean and others because he looks like a gangbanger to them, when he is actually a devoted family man. After Anthony and Peter steal Jean and Rick's car, Daniel comes over and changes the locks on their home. Daniel seeks a safe environment for his young daughter, Lara, who had a bullet go through her window in their previous home. That is why he moved to a safer neighborhood and enrolled her in a private school. Near the beginning he gives Lara an invisible "cloak" that he says will protect her should someone try to shoot at her. Farhad shoots at Lara and Daniel but they escape unhurt, because there were blanks in the gun. Lara believes that this is due to the protective powers of the "cloak".

Farhad
Farhad (Shaun Toub) is a Persian store owner who is afraid for his safety. He is depicted as frustrated by the racial harassment he experiences in the United States (despite being an American citizen), as well as deterred by difficulties with speaking English. To protect his store - the only thing his family has - he goes to a gun shop and attempts to buy a gun. The gun store owner quickly becomes frustrated with Farhad's conversation with his daughter in Persian, leading to racist and terrorist remarks (since the owner believes that Persians are Arabs and therefore, 'terrorists'), one of these comments being 'Yo, Osama, plan the jihad on your own time'. The owner refuses to sell Farhad a gun, but finally sells the gun to Farhad's daughter after being cryptic and lecherous about which bullets she needs. Farhad's suspicion of others is compounded by his difficulty understanding English; he does not heed Daniel's warning that his shop door needs replacing, believing Daniel intends to 'cheat' him, and as a result suffers a break-in. Blaming Anett for the invasion and racially-motivated destruction of his store, and angered by the insurance company rejecting his claim on the grounds of negligence, he confronts Daniel at his house, wielding his gun. Farhad fires at Daniel but accidentally shoots his daughter Lara, to the horror of both Daniel and Farhad. Fortunately, the gun was loaded with blanks, which were chosen by Dorri in the beginning of the film. Farhad leaves without further incident, later telling his daughter that Lara is his angel.

Dorri
Dorri (Bahar Soomekh) is Farhad's daughter, and is more acclimated than her father to American culture. She is constantly trying to calm her father down during his emotional temper outbursts. She is also a doctor at the morgue; she escorts Graham and his mother to Peter's body after it is discovered in a field.

Jake Flanagan
Jake Flanagan (William Fichtner) is an aide to Rick who tries to talk Graham into accepting a corrupt deal. He holds a complex viewpoint that is not blatantly racist, yet he makes bigoted remarks in a conversation with Detective Waters. He argues that the black community needs to see a deceased black cop as a hero, even if he was corrupt. It appears that Flanagan is interested in the political aspects of the case as the DA's office will look better in the eyes of the black community for convicting an officer who has a troubled racial history of a crime that he is partially guilty of. When Graham refuses to play, even if offered a promotion in exchange, Flanagan subtly mentions that Graham's brother has had a warrant issued for his arrest, and that perhaps this was a mistake. Flanagan implies that if Graham will do what the District Attorney wants, the case against his brother could be buried. Graham appears to accept the deal.

Lucien
Lucien (Dato Bakhtadze) runs a chop shop in which Anthony and Peter try to sell cars. The two thieves first try to sell him the SUV they stole from the Cabots, but he refuses to accept it because they ran over a Chinese man and he believes the crime will be traced back to him. This suggests that the various other characters who had committed crimes could be caught, although this is never confirmed. He is later shown to have his own racist beliefs when Anthony arrives with a van (belonging to the man that he and Peter ran over) full of Asian illegal immigrants. Lucien tries to buy the immigrants as workers, claiming they can be sold for an easy profit.

Box office
Crash opened in wide release on 6 May 2005, and was a box-office success in the late spring of 2005. The film had a budget of $6.5 million (plus $1 million in financing). Because of the financial constraints, director Haggis filmed in his own house, borrowed a set from the TV show Monk, used his car in parts of the film, and even used cars from other staff members. It grossed $53.4 million domestically, making back more than seven times its budget. Despite its success in relation to its cost, Crash was the least grossing film, at the domestic box office, to win Best Picture since The Last Emperor in 1987.

winning grinning

"The smile of our volunteers is Beijing’s best calling card,” Liu Qi, President of the Beijing Organising Committee of the Olympic Games.
there was no doubt that this pithy phrase would not be forgotten in the training of the 100,000 volunteers for the Olympics and Paralympics.
The perfect smile consists of “only showing the eight top teeth”,
The good news for the majority of volunteers is that they will not be held to such exacting standards, according to the head of the Olympic and Paralympic volunteer programme, Liu Jian.

China's snow..decoupling is an issue..

Physics
In physics, decoupling is the general phenomenon in which the interactions between some physical objects (such as elementary particles) disappear.
Biology
In biology, decoupling (used interchangeably with uncoupling) refers to the separation of the energy stored in the ion gradients inside mitochondria from the synthesis of ATP
[edit] Mathematics
In mathematics, decoupling refers to the rearrangement of systems of equations so that they are independent of each other.
Economics
In economics, decoupling refers to the lessening of correlation or dependency between variables. It is often used in the context of economic production and environmental quality. In this context, it refers to the ability of an economy to grow without corresponding increases in environmental pressure. In many economies increasing production (GDP) would involve increased pressure on the environment. An economy that is able to sustain GDP growth, without also experiencing a worsening of environmental conditions, is said to be decoupled. Exactly how, if, or to what extent this can be achieved is a subject of much debate.

China battles the coldest winter in a century

Millions remained stranded in China on Monday ahead of the biggest holiday of the year as parts of the country suffered their coldest winter in a century.
Freezing weather has killed scores of people and left travellers stranded before the Lunar New Year, or Spring Festival -- the only opportunity many people have to take a holiday all year.It has also brought China unwanted negative publicity six months before the Summer Olympics in Beijing.
Mobilising the might of the state, China has deployed more than 300,000 troops and nearly 1.1 million militia and army reservists to get traffic moving and ensure power supplies.

odd advertisement

An advertisement on Beijing's subway proclaiming "Squeezed in?! Go and buy a car then!" has angered passengers who said it only encourages traffic jams.The advertisement, written in large white letters on a red background, is also contrary to the Beijing city government's aim of getting more people to take public transport.The company sees subway passengers as potential customers, but the scornful tone of the advertising language exposes a lack of interest in human feelings behind a meticulous design.Some Internet users have come up with their own versions of the advertisement's slogan, the newspaper said, proposing: "Stuck in a traffic jam? Then take the subway!."

major shootings at schools and universities

Here are some major shootings inside schools and universities around the world in recent years:
March 1996 - BRITAIN - A gunman bursts into a primary school in Dunblane in Scotland and shoots dead 16 children and their teacher before killing himself.
March 1997 - YEMEN - A man with an assault rifle attacks hundreds of pupils at two schools in Sanaa, killing six children and two others. He is sentenced to death the next day.
March 1998 - USA - At Westside Middle School in Jonesboro, Arkansas, two boys aged 13 and 11 set off the fire alarm and kill four students and a teacher as they leave the school.
May 1998 - USA - In Springfield, Oregon, a student opens fire in Thurston High School, killing two students and injuring 22. The boy's parents are later found slain in their home.
April 1999 - USA - Two student gunmen kill 12 other students and a teacher at Columbine High School in Littleton, Colorado, before killing themselves.
January 2002 - USA - A student who had been dismissed from the Appalachian School of Law in Grundy, Virginia, kills the dean, a professor and a student, and wounds three others.
February 2002 - GERMANY - In Freising, Bavaria, a former student thrown out of trade school shoots three people before killing himself. Another teacher is injured.
April 26, 2002 - GERMANY - In Erfurt, eastern Germany, a gunman opens fire after he said he was not going to take a mathematics test. A total of 18 people die, including the assailant.
September 1, 2004 - RUSSIA - 333 hostages - at least 186 of them children - die in a chaotic storming of School No. 1 in Beslan, after it is seized by rebels demanding Chechen independence.
March 21, 2005 - USA - A 16-year-old high school student shoots dead five students, a teacher and a security guard at a school at Minnesota's Red Lake Indian Reservation. He also killed his grandfather and his grandfather's companion.
September 13, 2006 - CANADA - Kimveer Gill opens fire on the street and inside the college in Montreal's Dawson College, killing one student and injuring 19 others. Gill kills himself after a battle with police.
October 2, 2006 - USA - Charles Carl Roberts, a dairy truck driver with a grudge, attacks a one-room Amish school in rural Pennsylvania, He shoots 10 girls, killing five of them, before killing himself.
November 20, 2006 - GERMANY - An 18-year-old former pupil opens fire after storming the Scholl school in the town of Emsdetten. Eleven people are wounded before he commits suicide.
April 16, 2007 - USA - A gunmen kills 32 people and himself and wounds 15 others at Virginia Tech University in the deadliest campus shooting in U.S. history.
November 7, 2007 - FINLAND - Seven children and a head teacher are killed when a student opens fire at a school in southern Finland. The 18-year-old dies later in hospital after shooting himself in the head.
February 14, 2008 - USA - Five people are killed when a man opens fire in a classroom at Northern Illinois University near Chicago, including the gunman who killed himself, CNN reports.

shooting accident again!

DEKALB, Illinois (Reuters) - A man who killed five students and himself during a shooting spree at an Illinois college had stopped taking medication and become erratic in the last two weeks, buying two guns used in the bloodbath just six days ago, officials said on Friday.
The Chicago Tribune reported that he had drawn notice in academic circles, helping write papers on self-injury in prison and on the role of religion in early U.S. prisons, work that earned him a dean's award.
'A VERY GOOD STUDENT'
Kazmierczak "by all accounts that we can tell right now was a very good student that the professors thought well of," school president John Peters said in an interview on ABC's "Good Morning America."
"There is nothing in our system that he has had any counseling," he added. "Motive is the one thing that we're trying to pin down at this point. I really at this point have no sense of that. There is no note or threat that I know of."
Virginia Tech, a university in Blacksburg, Virginia, became the site of the deadliest shooting rampage in modern U.S. history in April 2007 when a gunman killed 32 people and himself.
Illinois senator and presidential candidate Barack Obama in a statement said that beyond prayers "we must also offer ... our determination to do whatever it takes to eradicate this violence from our streets and our schools; from our neighborhoods and our cities."

FBI

The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) is the primary investigative arm of the United States Department of Justice (DOJ), serving as both a federal criminal investigative body and a domestic intelligence agency. At present, the FBI has investigative jurisdiction over violations of more than 200 categories of federal crimes, making the FBI the de-facto lead law enforcement agency of the United States government.The motto of the bureau is "Fidelity, Bravery, Integrity".
In fiscal year 2006, the FBI's total budget was approximately $8.7 billion, including $495 million in program increases to enhance counter-terrorism, counterintelligence, cyber crime, information technology, security, forensics, training, and criminal programs.
It was established in 1908 as the Bureau of Investigation (BOI), and the name was changed to the FBI in 1935.
The FBI Headquarters are in Washington, D.C., and the FBI also has 56 field offices located in major cities throughout the United States as well as over 400 resident agencies in smaller cities and towns across the nation, and more than 50 international offices, called "Legal Attachés", in U.S. embassies worldwide.

CIA

The Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) is a civilian intelligence agency of the United States government. Its primary function is collecting and analyzing information about foreign governments, corporations, and persons in order to advise public policymakers. There is speculation that the organization has 100,000 employees around the world but the information is classified.
Prior to December 2004, the CIA was literally the central intelligence organization for the US government. The Intelligence Reform and Terrorism Prevention Act of 2004 created the office of the Director of National Intelligence (DNI), who took over some of the government and intelligence community(IC)-wide function that had previously been under the CIA. Among those functions were the preparation of estimates reflecting the consolidated opinion of the 16 IC agencies, and preparation of briefings for the President. When discussing the CIA, it is critical to understand when one is speaking of the older IC-wide responsibilities, or its present set of responsibilities.
The CIA both collects and analyzes intelligence and is part of the U.S. Intelligence Community, led by the DNI, who manages the Community. The CIA's headquarters is in the community of Langley in the McLean CDP of Fairfax County, Virginia, a few miles west of Washington, D.C. along the Potomac River.
The role and functions of the CIA are roughly equivalent to those of the United Kingdom's Secret Intelligence Service (MI6), the Australian Secret Intelligence Service (ASIS), the Canadian Security Intelligence Service (CSIS), the Russian Foreign Intelligence Service, Sluzhba Vneshney Razvedki (SVR) and Israel's Mossad.
The CIA is sometimes referred to euphemistically in government and military parlance as Other Government Agencies (or OGA), particularly when its operations in a particular area are an open secret.[5][6] Other terms include The Company and The Agency.

Waterboarding

Waterboarding is a form of torture that consists of immobilizing a person on his or her back, with the head inclined downward, and pouring water over the face and into the breathing passages. Through forced suffocation and inhalation of water, the subject experiences the process of drowning in a controlled environment and is made to believe that death is imminent.In contrast to merely submerging the head face-forward, waterboarding almost immediately elicits the gag reflex.Although waterboarding can be performed in ways that leave no lasting physical damage, it carries the risks of extreme pain, damage to the lungs, brain damage caused by oxygen deprivation, injuries (including broken bones) due to struggling against restraints, and even death. The psychological effects on victims of waterboarding can last for years after the procedure.
The controversial interrogation technique known as waterboarding and used by the United States qualifies as torture, the U.N. human rights chief said on Friday.
CIA director Michael Hayden telling Congress on Tuesday his agency had used waterboarding on three detainees captured after the September 11 attacks.
The U.S. Congress is considering banning the practice, in which prisoners are immobilized and water is poured into their breathing passages to simulate drowning.
Waterboarding is similar to a punishing practice in traditional China."dripping water into a wet cloth over a suspect's face