Danny Puff

NEW YORK/WASHINGTON (Reuters) - American International Group Inc, the insurer rescued by the U.S. government in 2008, said on Tuesday it is considering joining a lawsuit that claims the bailout terms were unfair, drawing angry condemnation from lawmakers.

A leading congressional Democrat called criticism of the deal's terms "utterly ridiculous," and former New York Attorney General Eliot Spitzer - who probed AIG when he was in office - called the prospect of a lawsuit "insulting to the public."

The White House declined to comment on the potential for a lawsuit but defended the $182 billion bailout.

Newly elected Senator Elizabeth Warren, feared by Wall Street as a potential thorn in its side on the Senate Banking Committee, called the lawsuit talk "outrageous" and said the company should not "bite the hand that fed them for helping them out in a crisis."

In a statement late Tuesday, AIG said it had no choice but to consider the demand from its former chief executive, Hank Greenberg, and his holding company Starr International that AIG join his lawsuit. Greenberg has sued for damages over the bailout and wants AIG to join him in challenging the "exorbitant" terms of the government rescue.

Legal action by AIG would be shocking, given that the company has just launched a high-profile television ad campaign called "Thank you, America," in which it offers the public its gratitude for the bailout. On Tuesday, AIG promoted the ads on Twitter, even as it came under fire over a possible lawsuit.

"AIG has paid back its debt to America with a profit, and we mean it when we say thank you to the American people," CEO Bob Benmosche said in a statement.

"At the same time, the Board of Directors has fiduciary and legal obligations to the Company and its shareholders to consider the demand served on us and respond in a fair, appropriate, and timely manner," he said.

AIG said its board would meet Wednesday to discuss joining the lawsuit, with three options on its plate: take over and pursue the claims made by Starr; refuse Greenberg's demand and block Starr from pursuing its claims; or let Starr pursue the claims on AIG's behalf.

It expects to make a decision "in the next several weeks," Benmosche said.

Greenberg, whose Starr International owned 12 percent of AIG before its near-collapse, has accused the New York Fed of using the rescue to bail out Wall Street banks at the expense of AIG shareholders. He has also called the NY Fed a "loan shark" for charging the "exorbitant" interest of 14.5 percent on its initial loan to AIG.

"If AIG enters this suit it would be the equivalent of a patient suing their doctor for saving their life," said Mark Williams, a former Federal Reserve bank examiner who teaches in the finance department at Boston University.

BUSINESS JUDGMENT

A federal judge in Manhattan already dismissed one of Greenberg's lawsuits in November; it is being appealed.

In his ruling dated November 19, Judge Paul Engelmayer said AIG had notified the court it would hold a board meeting January 9 to discuss joining one of the lawsuits, with a decision expected by the end of the month.

A separate lawsuit under different legal theories is still pending in the U.S. Court of Federal Claims in Washington.

One expert in securities law said he doubted AIG would ultimately decide to join the case.

"All the fiduciary standards that guide board behavior would warn against joining the suit," said James Cox, a professor of corporate and securities law at Duke University School of Law in Durham, North Carolina. "I see nothing to be gained by AIG piling on, and I see a lot of downside risk."

The deliberations were first reported by the New York Times.

'CHOICE WAS BANKRUPTCY'

The New York Fed said Tuesday there was no merit to any allegations that the bank harmed AIG.

"AIG's board of directors had an alternative choice to borrowing from the Federal Reserve and that choice was bankruptcy. Bankruptcy would have left all AIG shareholders with worthless stock," a representative of the bank said Tuesday.

Elijah Cummings, the ranking Democrat on the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, acknowledged that AIG's board has a fiduciary duty to consider the lawsuit. But he also said the company had a choice in 2008 and picked what it considered the better option.

"The idea that AIG might sue the government is an unbelievable insult to our nation's taxpayers, who cleaned up the mess this firm created," he said in a statement.

Cummings' former colleague, the recently retired Barney Frank, said he was "stunned" by the news and added that AIG was a fully willing participant in the rescue.

"There was not the hint of a suggestion of any coercion. They did this very voluntarily, very gratefully. And if the company were now to go around and join this lawsuit, that would be outrageous," Frank said in an interview.

The U.S. Treasury declined to comment. It completed its final sale of AIG stock in mid-December, concluding the bailout with what Treasury called a positive return of $22.7 billion.

AIG shares fell 0.8 percent to close at $35.65. After losing half its value in 2011, the stock rose more than 52 percent in 2012, tripling the gains of the broader S&P insurance index.

(Reporting by Ben Berkowitz, Karen Freifeld and Jonathan Spicer in New York and Emily Stephenson and Matt Spetalnick in Washington; Editing by Nick Zieminski and Richard Chang)

Read More

PASADENA, Calif. (AP) Five minutes into their season-opening news conference and the new team at "American Idol" were having their first disagreement about their disagreements. Then Mariah Carey and Nicki Minaj kept it going.

"We're professionals. Have you ever had an argument with someone you've worked with?" Minaj said after repeated questions Tuesday about her reported feud with new fellow judge Carey.

"This was sort of one-sided," interjected Carey, wearing a queenly smile.

"No, it wasn't," snapped back Minaj.

Fox network executive Mike Darnell was asked by reporters with the Television Critics Association if the clash was authentic. He said there was a lot of musical passion within the group, which also includes country star Keith Urban and returning judge Randy Jackson, and that triggered disagreements.

"The fighting is what it is," Carey said at one point. "This is 'American Idol.' It's bigger than all that. It's bigger than some stupid trumped-up thing."

Reports that the two divas were at odds surfaced last fall. On "The View," Barbara Walters recounted a phone conversation with Carey in which the pop star said that Minaj threatened to shoot her after a taping. The rapper quickly responded with dismissive tweets.

Trumped up or not, she and Minaj appeared on the panel with Urban carefully placed between them and indulged in their briefly testy "one-sided" exchange. But they also responded to a request to say something nice about each other.

Minaj called Carey one of her favorite all-time artists who has shaped a generation of singers. In return, Carey fondly recalled working with Minaj on a single titled "ironically," as Carey noted "Up Out My Face."

"I knew she was going to go far, and still is," Carey said.

"American Idol" begins its 12th season Wednesday facing questions once again about its ability to endure as a top-rated show, especially given the increasingly crowded talent show landscape that includes NBC's hit "The Voice." All the shows are down in the ratings, Darnell noted.

Veteran executive producer Nigel Lythgoe is used to hearing the query. Famous judges have the pre-debut spotlight and media attention but the contestants ultimately are what keep viewers watching, he said after the panel.

That's not to say the panel isn't key, said Trish Kinane, another executive producer.

"We wanted judges who were experts and had a right to be here, and we also wanted honesty," she said. "We very much took that into consideration. I think we've got it. They're not shrinking violets, they say what they think, and we encourage that."

Minaj displayed that Tuesday, saying firmly that "Idol" is not the show for rap, her own genre.

"If you're looking for people to believe you and feed you as a rapper, I wouldn't do it," said Minaj, adding that viewers love "American Idol" as an "honest singing competition, and I'm not here to change that."

___

Online:

http://www.fox.com

Read More

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The powerful gun lobby, the National Rifle Association, is slated to meet with Vice President Joe Biden as he considers recommendations on how to respond to a mass shooting last month in Newtown, Connecticut, the White House said on Tuesday.

After the Newtown school shooting, which President Barack Obama called the worst day of his presidency, he asked Biden to come up with a broad range of ideas to curb gun violence - ideas he will unveil in his annual State of the Union address, traditionally given in late January.

Obama has said he wants new gun control measures passed during the first year of his second term, but gun control is a divisive issue in the United States where the right to bear arms is enshrined in the Constitution.

Biden's task force is examining legislation that would ban assault rifles, but is also looking at the role of violent movies and videogames in mass shootings and whether there is adequate access to mental health services.

Biden and his task force are slated to hold meeting this week with victims of gun violence, gun safety groups, hunting groups, and gun owners, White House spokesman Jay Carney told reporters.

"His group will also meet with representatives of the entertainment and video-game industries," Carney said.

Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius will meet with mental health and disability advocates, and Education Secretary Arne Duncan is slated to meet with parent, teacher and education groups, Carney said.

The NRA has proposed armed guards in schools, an idea about which Obama has expressed skepticism.

The group's top lobbyist, James J. Baker, will attend the task force meeting on Thursday, an NRA spokesman said.

"We are sending a representative to hear what they have to say," NRA spokesman Andrew Arulanandam said in an e-mailed statement.

(Additional reporting by David Ingram; Editing by Sandra Maler and Jackie Frank)

Read More

TOKYO (Reuters) - A Japanese-led team of scientists has captured on film the world's first live images of a giant squid, journeying to the depths of the ocean in search of the mysterious creature thought to have inspired the myth of the "kraken", a tentacled monster.

The images of the silvery, three-metre (10 feet) long cephalopod, looming out of the darkness nearly 1 km below the surface, were taken last July near the Ogasawara islands, 1,000 km (620 miles) south of Tokyo.

Though the beast was small by giant squid standards - the largest ever caught stretched 18 metres long, tentacles and all - filming it secretly in its natural habitat was a key step towards understanding the animal, researchers said.

"Many people have tried to capture an image of a giant squid alive in its natural habitat, whether researchers or film crews. But they all failed," said Tsunemi Kubodera, a zoologist at Japan's National Museum of Nature and Science, who led the team.

"These are the first ever images of a real live giant squid," Kubodera said of the footage, shot by Japanese national broadcaster NHK and the Discovery Channel.

[Slideshow: Tiniest animals on the planet]

The key to their success, said Kubodera, was a small submersible rigged with lights invisible to both human and cephalopod eyes.

He, a cameraman and the submersible's pilot drifted silently down to 630 metres and released a one-metre-long squid as bait. In all, they descended around 100 times.

"If you try and approach making a load of noise, using a bright white light, then the squid won't come anywhere near you. That was our basic thinking," Kubodera said.

[Slideshow: NatGeo's 2012 photo contest winners]

"So we sat there in the pitch black, using a near-infrared light invisible even to the human eye, waiting for the giant squid to approach."

As the squid neared they began to film, following it into the depths to around 900 metres.

"I've seen a lot of giant squid specimens in my time, but mainly those hauled out of the ocean. This was the first time for me to see with my own eyes a giant squid swimming," he said. "It was stunning, I couldn't have dreamt that it would be so beautiful. It was such a wonderful creature."

Until recently, little was known about the creature believed to be the real face of the mythical kraken, a sea-monster blamed by sailors for sinking ships off Norway in the 18th century.

But for Kubodera, the animal held no such terror.

"A giant squid essentially lives a solitary existence, swimming about all alone in the deep sea. It doesn't live in a group," he said. "So when I saw it, well, it looked to me like it was rather lonely."

(Reporting by Ruairidh Villar; Writing by Elaine Lies; Editing by Daniel Magnowski)

Read More

PARIS (Reuters) - French film star Gerard Depardieu failed to show up in court to face drink driving charges on Tuesday as he pursued a headline-grabbing world tour that has seen him set up an alleged tax haven home in Belgium and pick up a passport in Russia.

The garrulous actor's lawyer said he had missed the hearing in Paris because he was now in Montenegro, holding meetings over a film in which he will play disgraced former IMF chief Dominique Strauss-Kahn.

The no-show means the case will turn into a full trial - guaranteeing yet another day in the spotlight for Depardieu who is already caught up in a public row with French authorities over his tax status.

It could also lead to the 64-year-old star of "Cyrano de Bergerac" and "Asterix and Obelix" getting a tougher sentence if convicted - in theory up to two years in prison.

"Despite wanting to be there and meet the judges and in no way to escape justice, Gerard Depardieu absolutely could not be present," his lawyer Eric de Caumont told a scrum of reporters outside the Paris courtroom on Tuesday.

He said his client was in Montenegro negotiating a deal for an upcoming film in which he would play Strauss-Kahn, who was seen as the next Socialist president of France before a U.S. sex scandal bought down his career last year.

A day earlier on Monday, Depardieu celebrated at a FIFA awards ceremony in Zurich.

Depardieu is accused of crashing his scooter in Paris with more than three times the legal limit of alcohol in his blood. No one else was injured in the accident.

The actor did not have to attend the hearing. But many defendants have used similar pre-trial sessions to strike a bargain with prosecutors and accept a lighter sentence in exchange for acknowledging guilt.

Depardieu hit the headlines last month after he bought a house over the border in Belgium, spurring accusations he was trying to dodge a proposed new tax on millionaires.

French Prime Minister Jean-Marc Ayrault called the move "pathetic" and unpatriotic.

Last week, Depardieu accepted a Russian passport, provoking even fiercer charges that he had abandoned his homeland.

Russia has a flat income tax rate of 13 percent, compared to the 75 percent on income over 1 million euros ($1.32 million) that President Francois Hollande wants to levy in France.

Depardieu on Monday denied he was leaving France for tax reasons.

"I have a Russian passport, but I remain French and I will probably have dual Belgian nationality. But if I'd wanted to escape the taxman, as the French press say, I would have done it a long time ago," he said.

Depardieu is a larger-than-life and outspoken figure who began his long career playing thugs and drop-outs before moving on to leading-man roles in films like the romantic comedy "Green Card".

A few months before the scooter incident, a car driver accused Depardieu of assault and battery during an altercation in Paris. Last year, the actor outraged passengers on an Air France flight by urinating into a bottle in the aisle.

(Additional Reporting by Thierry Leveque.; Editing by Mark John and Andrew Heavens)

Read More

VATICAN CITY (Reuters) - The ubiquitous term "spread" - a staple of financial news bulletins and one of the main measures of investor sentiment - has now penetrated even the elevated lexicon of the papacy.

In his speech to diplomats from around the world, Pope Benedict chastised those who only think of a "spread" in financial terms. He said there should be a simultaneous concern for a social "spread" - the gap between the rich and poor.

"If the differential index between financial taxes represents a source of concern, the increasing differences between those few who grow ever richer and the many who grow hopelessly poorer, should be a cause for dismay," the pope told the diplomats in his speech at the Vatican on Monday.

"In a word, it is a question of refusing to be resigned to a 'spread' in social well-being, while at the same time fighting one in the financial sector," he said.

During the financial crisis facing Italy for more than a year, hardly a week has passed without a news report about the see-sawing spread - the risk premium investors demand to hold Italian bonds rather than their safer German equivalents.

The higher the spread, the greater interest payments are for Italy to finance its public debt. The spread was at 574 basis points about 14 months ago when Prime Minister Mario Monti took office, and is now at about 279 basis points.

But in the part of his speech that centred on financial issues - most of the address was dedicated to hot spots such as Syria - the pope said politicians had to consider people as well as numbers.

"Certainly, if justice is to be achieved, good economic models, however necessary, are not sufficient. Justice is achieved only when people are just," he said.

As far as the spread is concerned, Benedict, a world-class theologian who by his own admission is not good with numbers, is only the latest person to be unexpectedly touched by the S-word.

Last month Monti told a television interviewer that talk of bond spreads had filtered down from the power lunches of bankers and brokers all the way to his grandson's kindergarten.

"The youngest of my daughter's three children was home and saw a news programme on television and they were talking about the spread," Monti said. "And he said 'Mamma, but I'm Spread'".

It seems the word has become so much a part of the common lexicon that his schoolmates gave him the nickname "Spread".

(Reporting By Philip Pullella, editing by Paul Casciato)

Read More

JOHANNESBURG (Reuters) - David R. Ellis, the child actor and former stuntman who went on to direct gory films including "Snakes on a Plane", has been found dead in a Johannesburg hotel.

Ellis, 60, was last seen alive in a restaurant on Saturday. His body was discovered in a bathroom by a hotel manager at the weekend. There was no indication of foul play or robbery, police said in a statement on Tuesday.

"It is unknown what was the cause of death," South African police said.

Ellis was in South Africa shooting a movie.

His 2006 film "Snakes on a Plane" about reptiles slithering through a jet inflicting gruesome deaths on passengers spawned numerous parodies, massive internet hoopla and was one of the most heavily hyped films of the North American summer season.

The film's star, Samuel L. Jackson, threatened to quit when the studio considered changing the title, saying he had taken the job based on the name.

"So talented, so kind, such a Good Friend. He'll be missed. Gone too soon!" Jackson tweeted on Tuesday.

Ellis also directed other B-list thrillers including "Shark Night" and "Cellular".

(Reporting by Jon Herskovitz, editing by Paul Casciato)

Read More

LOS ANGELES (AP) During production of his final post-midnight show, Jimmy Kimmel's studio audience waited patiently while he taped a string of promotional spots.

"Hey, Denver: You, me, now at 10:35. Let's not be weird about this," the host quipped to the camera in his Hollywood Boulevard studio.

"This will be good for us," Kimmel said earnestly in another local station promo.

The message in each spot whether "Jimmy Kimmel Live" is on at 11:35 p.m. in the East and West or earlier elsewhere is that Kimmel will be playing in the same league as veterans Jay Leno and David Letterman, starting Tuesday with guests Jennifer Aniston and No Doubt.

The message Kimmel delivered to a recent teleconference was equally concise: He won't be changing his style for the move, pushing aside conventional wisdom that edgier late-night humor won't play in Peoria or elsewhere before the clock strikes 12.

It's "Jimmy Kimmel Live," after all, that has given the world such brashly funny videos as the Matt Damon-Sarah Silverman musical romp with bleep-worthy lyrics.

"There's this idea that you need to broaden the show or make it ... more wholesome or something like that. And I think that's a little bit out-of-date, that perception," Kimmel told reporters.

"I guess only time will tell," he added, in his typically low-key delivery.

Just as with Kimmel's promised approach to the most coveted time period in late-night, ABC is taking a bold step by swapping "Nightline" with his show. The news program, offering viewers a non-talk show option, has been the period's ratings leader.

But the network likely won't be sweating the early returns, according to analyst Brad Adgate of Horizon Media. He says putting Kimmel into the pre-midnight pocket, when more viewers are still up and watching, is a strategy aimed at an inevitable future.

"Leno and Letterman aren't going to be doing this forever," Adgate said, and ABC gives him a head start on establishing himself by putting him on now.

"This is something you may scratch your head at now, but in five years from now he's the incumbent and the leader" in the time period, the analyst said.

Long-term schemes, of course, don't always pan out. Despite anointing Conan O'Brien as its new "Tonight" host five years before he made the move in 2009, NBC ended up with a mess on its hands that saw O'Brien bolt to TBS and Leno retake "Tonight" in 2010 after his short-lived prime-time series.

Whether Kimmel gets a jump on his opponents-to-be with Jimmy Fallon the expected pick for "Tonight" being the late-night ruler is a far different proposition than in Johnny Carson's day. The "Tonight" institution, operating virtually unopposed, could average a nightly audience of as much as 15 million.

That's unimaginable in today's fragmented TV world. Leno claims the top talk-show spot with some 3.5 million average viewers, followed by Letterman on CBS with 2.8 million. "Jimmy Kimmel Live" was drawing under 2 million nightly viewers at 12:05 Eastern but, according to Nielsen Co. ratings, finished up 2012 with a 10-year viewership high.

The demographics also have changed, with more advertiser-favored young viewers gravitating to cable options such as Adult Swim or Comedy Central and increasingly likely to catch up online with the best moments of network late-night.

But the 11:35 p.m. East-West sweet spot remains the prize, and Kimmel may have more than the desire to succeed in mind. While he's a long-time admirer of Letterman, he's taken sharp public jabs at Leno, including blaming him for O'Brien's ill-fated tenure at "Tonight."

So Kimmel is humble about competing directly with Letterman (calling him a "legend in broadcasting" who shouldn't bat an eye at the prospect of new competition) but is throwing elbows at Leno, especially over the "Tonight" plan to get out ahead of "Jimmy Kimmel Live" by airing at 11:34 p.m. Eastern.

"Well, I think NBC has had a lot of success moving Jay Leno earlier so it makes perfect sense," he said, dryly, referring to Leno's short-lived prime-time stint. Kimmel dismissed the time-shifting as likely a brief "trick" to protect "Tonight" ratings, one that ultimately won't matter.

"This really isn't about the first month or about the first week or about the first night, it's a long-term thing," Kimmel told reporters. "If we do well the first week, I'm sure there will be a lot of press given to that. But what really matters is how you do in May, and that's when we'll really know ... where we stand."

___

Online:

http://abc.go.com/

Read More

PARIS (AP) French actor Gerard Depardieu will not show up at a Paris court Tuesday to face drunken driving charges because he has clashing professional commitments abroad, his lawyer said Tuesday.

Depardieu's lawyer Eric de Caumont said his client was not trying to dodge French justice, but is abroad "meeting the producers of a movie," whose filming in the United States will begin in January.

The 64-year-old star of films such as "Green Card" and "Cyrano de Bergerac" was picked up last November by police after he fell off his scooter in northwest Paris.

The drunken driving hearing will now be deferred to a criminal court, and he could lose his driving license and could face up to two years in jail, Caumont said.

Depardieu has caused controversy in recent weeks for other reasons. On Saturday he received a Russian passport from President Vladimir Putin, after threatening to return his French passport after Prime Minister Jean-Marc Ayrault called him "pathetic" for deciding to move to tax-friendly Belgium.

In a much publicized letter in December, Depardieu also made reference to his headline-grabbing lifestyle: "I won't cast a stone at (people) who have cholesterol, hypertension, diabetes or too much alcohol or those who fall asleep on their scooter: I am one of them, as you dear media outlets like so much to repeat."

Back in 1998, Depardieu also crashed his motorcycle when his blood-alcohol limit was five times over the legal limit, escaping with leg and face injuries.

_____

Follow Thomas Adamson at http://Twitter.com/ThomasAdamsonAP

Read More

LAS VEGAS (AP) -- Sony Corp. is finally pressing its advantage as a conglomerate that owns both high-tech gadgets and the content that plays on them by being the only electronics maker to offer ultra-HD TVs and a way to get movies to the new super clear screens.

Ultra-high definition TVs, which quadruple the number of pixels of current high definition technology, have been the talk of the International CES gadget show so far. But only Sony has offered a content solution to go with them.

With 84-inch ultra-HD set it launched in November, Sony threw in a tablet and computer server that has 10 movies preloaded on the device for $25,000. The movies came from the library of Sony Pictures or its subsidiary Columbia Pictures, like "The Amazing Spider-Man" and "The Karate Kid."

On Monday, Sony unveiled 55-inch and 65-inch ultra-HD sets that will sell this spring for an undisclosed price believed to be below $10,000. The Japanese electronics maker said it would launch a download service this summer in the U.S. so buyers of the smaller sets would have access to movies in the clearer format.

For now, it will offer the same 10 movies from its library for download.

After unveiling the service, Sony CEO Kazuo Hirai told reporters that the ultra-HD movies could be made available to other makers like Samsung or LG later. The company is eyeing coordination with other movie studios, but not immediately.

"That's a key differentiator from a Sony perspective that really speaks to the advantage of what we have in terms of both the electronics business and the content business," he said. "For the time being, that's something we bring exclusively to our customers."

Sony is betting big on ultra-HD, and is a leading supplier of a high-end cameras that shoot in the format, which renders moving images at a resolution of 3,840 pixels wide and 2,160 pixels tall. That is twice the length and width of high definition, resulting in four times as many pixels, or more than 8 million.

The company also makes projectors that show movies in so-called 4K, and Hirai said that anyone who has been to the movies lately has probably experienced it firsthand without realizing it.

Getting these higher resolution files to home televisions is no small matter. A Blu-ray disc format has not been created yet and broadcasters are years away from offering TV signals at the higher resolution.

Sony representatives said that buyers of its 55-inch and 65-inch TVs may be asked to buy an ultra-HD server separately, although a final decision hadn't been made. It is also unclear how much downloadable movies will cost.

The company said it would offer Blu-ray discs that are mastered in 4K but compressed to fit on a current Blu-ray disc. The TV's embedded technology presents the compressed movie at close to 4K resolution, but not quite as good as when they are played from the 4K media player.

But with all new technologies, there were glitches.

Hirai had an embarrassing moment Monday when he introduced the world's first ultra-HD TV using organic light-emitting diodes (OLED), only to see the screen go blank as the computer running it had an error.

"This revolutionary TV combines the world's largest OLED display with dazzling 4K resolution, including this beautiful ... interface screen," he said, then turned to see a blank screen as chuckles rippled through the crowd.

Later, Hirai looked back at the 56-inch display only to see the error continue.

"Excellent," he said.

A Sony staffer rolled the TV further away and Hirai carried on his presentation. He later appeared to be good-natured with journalists.

Hirai said the ultra-HD OLED set is a prototype and didn't announce price or availability.

In the Sony booth after the presentation, other ultra-HD OLED screens played without a problem.

Read More