Actress Sienna Miller told a media ethics inquiry Thursday that she was left paranoid and scared by years of relentless tabloid pursuit that ranged from paparazzi outside her house to the hacking of her mobile phone.
Miller said the surveillance, and a stream of personal stories about her in the tabloids, led her to accuse friends and family of leaking information to the media. In fact, her cell phone voice mails had been hacked at Rupert Murdoch’s News of the World tabloid.
Miller, 29, became a tabloid staple when she dated fellow actor Jude Law. She said the constant scrutiny left her feeling “very violated and very paranoid and anxious, constantly.”
“I felt like I was living in some sort of video game,” she said.
She called the paparazzi focus on her terrifying.
“For a number of years I was relentlessly pursued by 10 to 15 men, almost daily,” she said. “Spat at, verbally abused.
“I would often find myself, at the age of 21, at midnight, running down a dark street on my own with 10 men chasing me. And the fact they had cameras in their hands made that legal.”
Miller, the star of “Layer Cake” and “Alfie,” was one of the first celebrities to take the News of the World to court over illegal eavesdropping. In May, the newspaper agreed to pay her 100,000 pounds ($160,000) to settle claims her phone had been hacked.
The newspaper’s parent company now faces dozens of lawsuits from alleged hacking victims.
Miller, who looked confident as she gave evidence at London’s Royal Courts of Justice, said challenging Murdoch’s media conglomerate had been a difficult decision.
“I was very nervous about taking on an empire that was richer and far more powerful than I will ever be,” she said. “It was very daunting.”
“Harry Potter” author J.K. Rowling, who has campaigned to keep her children out of the media glare, is due to give evidence later Thursday about media intrusion.
Prime Minister David Cameron set up the inquiry amid a still-unfolding scandal over illegal eavesdropping by the Murdoch-owned tabloid. Murdoch closed down the News of the World in July after evidence emerged that it had illegally accessed the mobile phone voice mails of celebrities, politicians and even crime victims in its search of scoops.
More than a dozen News of the World journalists and editors have been arrested over allegations of illegal eavesdropping, and the scandal has also claimed the jobs of two top London police officers, Cameron’s media adviser and several senior Murdoch executives.
The inquiry, led by Judge Brian Leveson, plans to issue a report next year and could recommend major changes to media regulation in Britain.
Miller took the stand after another witness was allowed to give evidence in private. The courtroom was cleared of the press as the witness, identified only as HJK, testified about suffering intrusions while in a relationship with a well-known figure, whose identity was also kept secret.
Former Formula One boss Max Mosley, who has campaigned for a privacy law since his interest in sadomasochistic sex was exposed in the News of the World, broadened the focus in testimony Thursday, discussing the difficulty of squashing malicious stories in the Internet age.
Mosley successfully sued the News of the World over a 2008 story headlined “Formula One boss has sick Nazi orgy with five hookers.” Mosley has acknowledged the orgy, but argued that the story _ obtained with a hidden camera _ was an “outrageous” invasion of privacy. He said the Nazi allegation was damaging and “completely untrue.”
Mosley said he has had stories about the incident removed from 193 websites around the world, and is currently taking legal action “in 22 or 23 different countries,” including proceedings against search engine Google in France and Germany.
“The fundamental thing is that Google could stop this appearing but they don’t or won’t as a matter of principle,” he said. “The really dangerous things are the search engines.”
“You work all your life to try and achieve something or do something useful,” Mosley added. “And suddenly something like this happens and that’s what you’re remembered for.”
High-profile witnesses still to come include CNN celebrity interviewer Piers Morgan, who has denied using phone hacking while he was editor of the Daily Mirror newspaper.
The hearings have heard allegations of media malpractice and intrusion that extend far beyond the News of the World.
Witnesses have included celebrities like actor Hugh Grant and ordinary people pursued in times of grief, including the parents of murdered 13-year-old Milly Dowler, whose voice mails were accessed by the News of the World after she disappeared in 2002.
Her parents said the hacking gave them false hope their daughter was still alive during the investigation into her disappearance.
On Wednesday, the parents of missing child Madeleine McCann said they were left distraught by false stories and the publication of private information by the tabloid press.
Kate and Gerry McCann told the inquiry they felt powerless in the face of stories, based on concocted evidence, suggesting they had killed their daughter. Madeleine had vanished when she was three during the British family’s 2007 vacation in Portugal.
Stronger retail sales and surging profits from Google are sending stocks higher.
The Dow Jones industrial average turned positive for the year Friday, and the S&P 500 index had its best week in more than two years.
Retail sales increased 1.1 percent in September, the biggest gain in seven months.
Google Inc. shot up nearly 6 percent after its quarterly income jumped 26 percent. Apple Inc. rose 3 percent as its new iPhone went on sale my credit score.
The Dow rose 166 points, or 1.4 percent, to close at 11,644. The S&P 500 rose 21, or 1.7 percent, to 1,225.
The Nasdaq rose 48 points, or 1.8 percent, to 2,668.
Five stocks rose for every one that fell on the New York Stock Exchange. Trading volume was below average, 3.6 billion shares.
KINCARDINE
Federal finance minister Jim Flaherty and Bank of Canada governor Mark Carney will do their best Friday to calm investors
Scandinavian airline group SAS AB posted its best earnings since 2008 during the second quarter of the year on the back of more passengers and lower costs.
The forecast-busting second-quarter results helped the company’s stock to soar more than 27 percent to 15.60 kronor ($2.43) on the Stockholm stock exchange.
SAS also pleased the market by reiterating its outlook for 2011, saying it expects to record a profit for the full year.
The Stockholm-headquartered company reported a second-quarter net profit of 551 million kronor ($86 million), a marked reversal of last year’s equivalent 502 million kronor loss, when operations were badly hit by the volcanic eruption in Iceland which cost the airline hundreds of millions of kronor.
Revenues in the three-month period were also up to 11.23 billion kronor from around 10 billion kronor last year.
Although costs fell in the April to June period, SAS said adverse effects stemming from the earthquake in Japan and the implementation of the group’s restructuring program weighed somewhat on the results.
The airliner said its cost-cutting program, dubbed Core SAS, is near completion. So far, it has reduced unit costs by 23 percent since 2008. Costs related to the measures are still expected to cost another 100-200 million kronor in 2011, it said.
SAS CEO Rickard Gustafson called it the “best result since 2008″ and was positive about the prospect of continued traffic growth in the second half of the year, particularly on U.S. routes.
But, he said, the positive result is still only “a step on the way” and that SAS will continue to keep a sharp eye on the development of both sales and costs.
In the second half of the year, Gustafson said SAS is due to launch a new strategic approach that will succeed Core SAS. The program will focus on profit growth, more cooperation and clearer customer focus.
The bill to raise the country’s borrowing limit and prevent a possible U.S. debt default passed in Congress. But it not enough for the U.S. to maintain its coveted AAA debt rating, according to Fitch Ratings.
On Tuesday, Fitch said the agreement was an important first step but “not the end of the process.” The rating agency wants to see a credible plan to reduce the budget deficit.
David Riley, managing director at Fitch, told The Associated Press: “There’s more to be done in order to keep the rating in the medium-term no fax payday advances.”
Fitch expects to conclude its review of the U.S. sovereign rating by the end of August. As the debt deal currently stands, it is possible the U.S. debt rating could be downgraded at that time, Fitch said.
OTTAWA
Japanese automaker Nissan is testing a super-green way to recharge its Leaf electric vehicle using solar power, part of a broader drive to improve electricity storage systems.
Nissan’s Leaf went on sale late last year, but the automaker is looking ahead to about five years time when aging Leaf vehicles may offer alternative business opportunities in using their lithium-ion batteries as a storage place for electricity.
Nissan Motor Corp. acknowledges that, once the Leaf catches on, a flood of used batteries could result as the life span of a battery is longer than an electric vehicle’s.
Electricity generation and storage are drawing attention in Japan after the March 11 earthquake and tsunami caused massive blackouts in the country’s northeast. A nuclear power plant that went into meltdown, Fukushima Dai-ichi, after backup generators were destroyed by the tsunami, is also renewing fears about a power crunch.
In the new charging system, demonstrated to reporters Monday, electricity is generated through 488 solar cells installed on the roof of the Nissan headquarters building in Yokohama, southwest of Tokyo.
Four batteries from the Leaf had been placed in a box in a cellar-like part of the building, and store the electricity generated from the solar cells, which is enough to fully charge 1,800 Leaf vehicles a year, according to Nissan.
Although interest is growing in renewable energy such as solar and wind power, a major challenge is the storage of electricity, which remains expensive without a breakthrough in battery technology.
Such interest is likely to keep growing in Japan because of fears about the safety of nuclear power. The Hamaoka nuclear plant is being shut down because of such concerns, and more may follow.
Other Japanese automakers, such as Toyota Motor Corp. and Honda Motor Co., are working on similar projects, such as linking hybrids with solar-equipped homes as part of energy-efficient communities called “smart grids.”
Electric vehicles produce no pollution or global-warming gases but need electricity, whose production mostly relies on polluting oil or gas.
Even after a Leaf is ready to be scrapped, its battery is likely to have 80 percent of its capacity. On the plus side, the Leaf with its high-capacity battery can store the equivalent of two days of household electricity use, Nissan said.
“What’s important for Nissan is to show solutions through EVs, step by step,” said Corporate Vice President Hideaki Watanabe.
A joint venture with Sumitomo Corp. called 4R Energy Corp. plans to offer eletricity storage systems like the one at Nissan headquarters for business and public facilities as a commercial product by 2016.
Nissan also hopes to start selling such storage systems for regular homes by the fiscal year starting in April 2012. It will carry out field tests from December, 4R Energy President Takashi Sakagami said.
Several years ago at a strategy meeting I was thumbing through some charts and a fundamental analyst asked me what I was trying to do. I replied
The weakening of the case against Dominique Strauss-Kahn is fueling intense debate in France about whether the former IMF chief will be able to return and run for president.
The Socialist had been widely seen as the leading contender in the 2012 election, leading polls in the months before his arrest on charges of sexually assaulting a New York hotel maid.
With her credibility now undercut by prosecutors and Strauss-Kahn free on bail, the left-leaning daily Liberation asks the question “DSK Back?” on its front page Monday no teletrack payday loan.
Socialist Party leader Martine Aubry says a July 13 deadline for candidates to register in the party primary could be pushed back if Strauss-Kahn wants a chance to run against conservative President Nicolas Sarkozy.
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