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GENEVA – Roman Polanski is finishing the edit of his latest movie "Ghost" from his house arrest in Switzerland, surrounded by family and bombarded by telephone calls of support, French philosopher Bernard-Henri Levy said in an interview Sunday.
Levy, a friend of the 76-year-old director, told the Lausanne-based weekly Le Matin Dimanche that he visited Polanski in his chalet in the luxury Swiss resort of Gstaad about 10 days ago and found him like "a rock," working and confident even though his family is worried about the U.S. extradition request hanging over him.
"It's in fact very impressive. He is in the process of finishing at a distance the editing of his next film, which I understand will be in the official selection at the next Berlin Festival," Levy said.
He said he was able to have a friendly dinner with Polanski in the chalet. Being able to entertain at home was one of the privileges the director received after his Dec. 4 transfer to house arrest from a Swiss jail after more than 60 days of detention.
Polanski has to wear an electronic monitoring bracelet around his ankle to guard against his leaving the grounds of the chalet, but he is able to receive guests inside or outside the house, work on his films, make telephone calls and send e-mails as much as he likes.
"The telephone doesn't stop ringing, the messages of support are pouring in, especially from his Swiss friends," Levy said.
He said Polanski told him Swiss officials were only doing their job in arresting him Sept. 26 and holding him in detention, but that all of them had treated him with kindness and appeared "extraordinarily embarrassed" by what he was going through.
Swiss authorities have said they will decide early next year whether to extradite Polanski the United States where he is wanted in Los Angeles for sentencing for having sex in 1977 with a 13-year-old girl.
If Polanski breaks the conditions for his house arrest, the Swiss government would confiscate the $4.5 million bail he deposited. That substantial amount was a key element in granting the house arrest — a first in Switzerland for a detainee in an extradition case.
Polanski's two children — Elvis, 9, and Morgane, 16 — and his wife, French actress Emmanuelle Seigner, have been staying in the chalet with him.
The Oscar-winning director of "Rosemary's Baby," "Chinatown" and "The Pianist" was arrested as he arrived in Zurich to receive a lifetime achievement award at a film festival.
Polanski was initially accused of raping the girl after plying her with champagne and a Quaalude pill during a 1977 modeling shoot. He was indicted on six felony counts, including rape by use of drugs, child molestation and sodomy, but he pleaded guilty to the lesser charge of unlawful sexual intercourse.
In exchange, the judge agreed to drop the remaining charges and sent him to prison for a 90-day psychiatric evaluation. The evaluator released Polanski after 42 days, but the judge said he was going to send him back to serve out the 90 days.
The filmmaker fled the U.S. on Feb. 1, 1978, the day he was to be formally sentenced. He has lived since then in France, which does not extradite its citizens.
Polanski has been getting help from his victim in the California case in a bid to have sex misconduct charges against him dismissed. The attorney for Samantha Geimer, who long ago publicly identified herself, argued earlier this month for an end to the case, saying she has repeatedly said she wants it dropped.
The California Second District Court of Appeal is being asked to decide if it should order a lower court to consider dismissing the case without Polanski's attendance in court.
Polanski claims that the U.S. judge and prosecutors acted improperly in his case.

The third millennium B.C. was the "Age of Cleanliness." Toilets and sewers were invented in several parts of the world, and Mohenjo-Daro circa 2800 B.C. had some of the most advanced, with lavatories built into the outer walls of houses. These were "Western-style" toilets made from bricks with wooden seats on top. They had vertical chutes, through which waste fell into street drains or cesspits. Sir Mortimer Wheeler, the director general of archaeology in India from 1944 to 1948, wrote, "The high quality of the sanitary arrangements could well be envied in many parts of the world today."

Nearly all of the hundreds of houses excavated had their own bathing rooms. Generally located on the ground floor, the bath was made of brick, sometimes with a surrounding curb to sit on. The water drained away through a hole in the floor, down chutes or pottery pipes in the walls, into the municipal drainage system. Even the fastidious Egyptians rarely had special bathrooms.

Here

The earliest historical record of a reservoir fountain pen dates back to the 10th century. In 953, Ma'ād al-Mu'izz, the caliph of Egypt, demanded a pen which would not stain his hands or clothes, and was provided with a pen which held ink in a reservoir and delivered it to the nib via gravity and capillary action.

Rollerball pens were introduced in the early 1980s. They make use of a mobile ball and liquid ink to produce a smoother line. Technological advances achieved during the late 1980s and early 1990s have improved the roller ball's overall performance. A porous point pen contains a point that is made of some porous material such as felt or ceramic. A high quality drafting pen will usually have a ceramic tip, since this wears well and does not broaden when pressure is applied while writing.

Personalized Pens

COPENHAGEN (AFP) –
The first cracks appeared among developing countries at the UN climate talks on Wednesday, revealing divisions between emerging giants and nations most exposed to the ravages of global warming.

Tensions surfaced despite efforts to restore calm to the 12-day negotiations after a row over an early draft text proposed by Denmark, the conference's chairman.

The tiny Pacific island nation of Tuvalu drove a wedge in the bloc of developing nations by calling for discussions on an amendment to the Kyoto Protocol.

For the first time, it would require China, India and other fast-growing high-population nations to take on legally-binding commitments to slash CO2 pollution after 2013.

The move was swiftly opposed by the big developing countries, ripping open a faultline within the so-called G-77 plus China bloc of 130 nations.

Until now, the group has stood by a diplomatic axiom that has prevailed since the UN climate convention came into being in 1992: rich countries caused global warming, and it was their responsibility to fix it.

According to this stance, only rich nations should be required to sign up to legally-binding emissions curbs under Kyoto.

But small island states and least developed countries -- which supported Tuvalu's move -- have become increasingly worried that such an approach will not rein in a dangerous surge of emissions in the future.

This pollution will come not from the industrialised world but from the high-population economies of China, India and Brazil.

Taukiei Kitara, head of Tuvalu's delegation, told AFP that the proposed constraints "would mostly remain on developed countries but also, partly, on big developing economies as well."

Kitara acknowledged that the proposal marked the first serious breach in a hitherto united front.

"We know the implementation of the Kyoto Protocol is not complete and we want to create an impulse for a stronger commitment," Kitara said, referring to the landmark treaty that, under its present commitment period, imposes emissions cuts on rich nations up to 2012. Related article: Sweden announces climate aid to poor countries

The 42-member Alliance of Small Island States (AOSIS), including Tuvalu, and the bloc of mainly African Least Developed Countries, have rejected the widely held goal of keeping global temperatures from rising more than 2.0 degrees Celsius (3.6 degrees Fahrenheit) as inadequate.

Only a cap of 1.5 C (2.7 F) compared to pre-industrial times would give these nations a chance of fighting off rising seas or crippling drought, they say.

The Copenhagen conference is taking place under the 194-nation UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC).

If all goes well, more than 110 leaders from around the world, including US President Barack Obama, Premier Wen Jiabao of China, Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and leaders of the European Union (EU), will seal a historic deal at the climax on December 18.

A framework accord would spell out national pledges for curbing heat-trapping carbon emissions and pump hundreds of billions of dollars in aid to poor countries, providing them with newer technology and the means to toughen their defences against the impact of climate change.

Further talks would be needed, probably throughout 2010, to fill in the details of the skeletal agreement.

Negotiators had sought to restore calm after a row on Tuesday over a leaked 11-day-old early text, proposed by Denmark, that apparently sought to sound out opinion amongst a select number of countries.

The G77 lashed it as an attempted stitch-up that was skewed in favour of rich nations.

But UNFCCC Executive Secretary Yvo de Boer insisted the draft was out of date and had no chance of being endorsed as the final version.

Many delegates expressed exasperation over the row, which they described as bogus or a distraction from the negotiations themselves.

The Climate Pool