Nelson Mandela Remains in Critical Condition

Nelson Mandela Remains in Critical Condition
By DEVON MAYLIE And PATRICK MCGROARTY

PRETORIA—Nelson Mandela remained in critical condition on Monday, as
attention shifted to the Pretoria hospital where the 94-year-old
former president has convalesced for more than two weeks.

Mr. Mandela's declining health also has prompted many South Africans
to weigh his legacy against his African National Congress party's
track record for delivering on his vision for a nonracial society that
would pull disenfranchised blacks into the political and economic
mainstream.

The numbers of well-wishers and journalists from around the world
swelled again outside the gates of the private Mediclinic Heart
Hospital in South Africa's capital. Flowers and messages of support
piled up against a brick wall for Mr. Mandela, a sign of enduring
public affection for the ailing statesmen. Family and government
officials have shuttled in and out to see him since Mr. Mandela was
admitted on June 8.

Until Sunday, the government had been terming his condition "serious
but stable." Late Sunday night, the South African presidency said his
health had worsened over 24 hours and his condition had turned
"critical." Speaking to reporters Monday, President Jacob Zuma
wouldn't elaborate on Mr. Mandela's condition or the care he was
receiving.
"All of us as a country should accept that Madiba is old...as he ages,
his health will trouble him," Mr. Zuma said, referring to Mr. Mandela
by his clan name, as he's popularly known here. "When a person is
critical, they are critical," he said.

The hospital's location and cardiac specialty have raised questions
about why Mr. Mandela's doctors brought him there to treat what
officials initially described as a recurrence of a lung infection, one
of many he has battled since contracting tuberculosis during his 27
years in prison for opposing South Africa's former white-minority
regime.

The clinic is 30 miles north of Mr. Mandela's home in the Johannesburg
suburbs, much farther away than a nearby Johannesburg hospital where
he received treatment in the past.

The trip wasn't without complications. Mr. Zuma's office acknowledged
over the weekend that Mr. Mandela's ambulance broke down en route to
Pretoria on June 8, forcing doctors to move him to a second vehicle to
finish the 40-minute drive. But Mr. Zuma's spokesman, Mac Maharaj, has
refuted reports that Mr. Mandela went into cardiac arrest on his way
to the hospital. He also denied Mr. Mandela was stranded on the road
for 40 minutes, but didn't elaborate, citing doctor-patient
confidentiality.

Mr. Maharaj said Monday that Mr. Mandela's doctors are in charge of
making all decisions related to his health, including the hospitals at
which he receives treatment and how much information to disclose. Mr.
Mandela has been hospitalized four times since December.

Malcom Matsiko, a 35-year-old accountant who walked past the Pretoria
hospital on his way to work Monday, said he hoped the choice of
hospitals could increase prospects for Mr. Mandela's recovery. "I pray
they brought him because they can make him better here," said Mr.
Matsiko, wearing a tattered black cap bearing the logo of the ANC
party that Mr. Mandela led to power in 1994. "I pray that he will exit
and be with us for some time more."

Mr. Mandela's hospitalization has led many South Africans to reflect
upon the promise he represented when he became the country's first
black president and about whether the ANC and the government have been
able to deliver on the future he envisioned.

South Africa's official unemployment rate is over a quarter of the
workforce, and economic growth is expected to linger near 2% this
year, weighed down by labor unrest at mines and in other sectors.

"Before, there were black people, and they were poor. Now there are
rich black people and poor black people, and the gap in between is not
gone," said Yandi Sigenu, a 24-year-old business analyst in
Johannesburg. "The government worries about only itself and its own
kind."

Mr. Zuma acknowledged South Africa's economic strains on Monday, but
he blamed a prolonged global downturn for the domestic troubles. He
also took issue with critics who have accused his government of a
lackluster performance that hasn't improved upon apartheid-era
education, basic services and levels of employment.

Mr. Zuma said his ANC-led government has successfully brought
electricity and clean water to nearly all South Africans and vowed to
work with businesses to create jobs and "do a lot more to improve the
quality of the poor and working class."

Mr. Zuma added: "What we can say in terms of implementation, we have
not done what we would have wanted to do."
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Samsung Announces Dates, Prices for Galaxy Tab 3

Samsung Announces Dates, Prices for Galaxy Tab 3
Samsung today announced launch dates and prices for its Galaxy Tab 3
line of tablets, including the first Intel-powered Android tablet
available in the United States.
The Intel tablet, which is the Galaxy Tab 3 10.1-inch, will start at
$399. The smaller, 8-inch Galaxy Tab 3, which will use a Samsung
Exynos processor, will start at $299, while the budget, 7-inch Galaxy
Tab 3 with a Marvell processor will cost $199.
All three tablets will go on pre-sale on June 25 with actual sales
starting July 7, Samsung said. The models sold in the U.S. will be
Wi-Fi-only, with no cellular capability.
The Galaxy Tab 3s, which were announced globally between April 29 and
June 3, take many styling cues from the Galaxy S 4 smartphones. The
7-inch and 8-inch models, especially, look like expanded Galaxy S 4
devices. They all come in white or gold-brown, with a physical home
button below the screen, just like the Galaxy S 4 has.
The specs here vary a lot. The 7-inch, $199 model has a 1.2-GHz
dual-core Marvell processor, a 1,024-by-600 screen and Android 4.1.
There's a 3-megapixel camera on the back and a 1.3-megapixel camera on
the front. The device comes with only 8GB of storage, although there's
also a memory card slot. This is a basic tablet that competes with
gadgets like the Amazon Kindle Fire HD and the Kobo Arc. Its screen is
lower-resolution than either of those, but Samsung throws in some
exclusive content and features, such as three months of Hulu Plus and
two years of a 50GB Dropbox account.
Still, though, Samsung will have to rely on its name and build quality
to fend off lower-priced competitors like the Asus Memo Pad HD 7 and
Coby MID7065.
The 8-inch model steps up to Android 4.2 and uses a more mainstream
1.5-GHz Samsung Exynos dual-core processor. This unit has a
1,280-by-800 screen, a 5-megapixel rear camera and a 1.3-megapixel
front camera, along with 16GB of storage (of which only 11.26GB is
available, Samsung points out.) It's also only 7.4mm thick. At $299,
it's competing with Apple's $329 iPad mini and Amazon's $269 Kindle
Fire HD 8.9 (as well as some upcoming Toshiba tablets), offering a
more standard Android alternative.
It's the 10.1-inch tablet I'm most intrigued by, because of that Intel
processor. The Galaxy Tab 3 10.1 uses a 1.6-GHz Intel Atom Z2560
"Clover Trail+" processor, and it'll be the first Intel Android device
released in the U.S. While we've seen Intel-based smartphones appear
in other countries, none of them have come here because of Intel's
lack of LTE support; with this Wi-Fi-only tablet, that isn't a
problem.
According to Intel, its processor will offer battery life advantages
over competing choices, while maintaining fast performance and
application compatibility. We'll have to see. The Galaxy Tab 3 10.1 is
only 7.9mm thick and packs a relatively healthy 6,800mAh battery, and
battery consumption will also be kept down by using a somewhat
disappointly low-res 1,280-by-800 screen.
Other stats include a 3-megapixel main camera, 1.3-megapixel front
camera, Android 4.2, 16GB of memory and a memory card slot.
Other than the Intel play, I'm a little underwhelmed here. At a $399
price point, it's obvious that the Tab 3 10.1 isn't going up against
flagships like the Asus Transformer Infinity or the latest iPad, but
I'm also concerned about the upcoming Asus Memo Pad FHD 10, which has
the same Intel chip and a higher-resolution screen at a potentially
lower price.
Samsung is doing its best to enhance the Galaxy Tab 3 experience with
exclusive software, of course. All the Tabs will have an IR blaster
with Samsung's WatchOn software, which functions as both a live TV
guide and a way to search streaming shows. They'll also support Group
Play, which lets several Samsung devices act as multiple speakers for
the same music or videos, as well as Wi-Fi Direct file transfer. (They
won't support S Beam, as they lack NFC.) A Samsung Apps showcase will
foreground apps designed for the tablets, which is especially
important on the 10.1-inch device because many Google Play apps aren't
optimized for that screen size.

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George Zimmerman Trial Opening statements launch Monday

George Zimmerman Trial Opening statements launch Monday
(CBS) SANFORD, Fla. - Opening statements are scheduled to start today
in the case of George Zimmerman, the former neighborhood watch
volunteer accused of murder in the shooting death of unarmed Florida
teen Trayvon Martin last year.

PICTURES: George Zimmerman in court

READ: Trayvon Martin Shooting: A timeline of events

The high-profile, racially-charged case has drawn the national and
international spotlight, and for six jurors and four alternates chosen
Thursday, sequestration began this weekend. The jurors will be allowed
limited contact with friends, family, and the outside world. However,
they will have monitored entertainment and won't be exposed to media
reports on the case for the duration of the trial.

Central to the case will be who started the deadly altercation the
night of Feb. 26, 2012, whether George Zimmerman was acting in
self-defense and whether his shooting of Martin was justifiable under
Florida law.

For prosecutors, experts say opening statements will likely center on
Zimmerman's alleged profiling of Trayvon Martin, 17, as he walked
through the Sanford, Fla. gated community that evening. They'll likely
seek to indicate to the jury that Zimmerman labeled Martin as an
intruder and a potential criminal in the community, and then
confronted him, said David LaBahn, president and CEO of the
Association of Prosecuting Attorneys.

"I think they've got a very solid case here - someone went and
confronted and killed an unarmed person, and did it in a mental state
of they were taking the law into their own hands," LaBahn said.

VIDEO: George Zimmerman trial: Self-defense, murder at case's core
In order to prove second-degree murder, prosecutors must prove beyond
a reasonable doubt that Martin's death was caused by Zimmerman's
alleged criminal action, and that the killing was committed with
ill-will or spite and showed an indifference to human life.

Prosecutors may point to a phone call Zimmerman placed to
non-emergency dispatchers the night of the deadly altercation in
attempting to prove Zimmerman was acting with ill will, LaBahn said.
As Zimmerman called the dispatchers to report a suspicious person,
Zimmerman said Martin "looks like he's up to no good or he's on drugs
or something" and later used the term "a**holes."

While prosecutors may allege Zimmerman labeled Martin as a criminal,
LaBahn said they likely won't argue he racially profiled Martin, who
was black, in an attempt to keep the facts "straightforward" for the
jury. Use of the term "racially profiled" in opening statements was
disallowed last week in a key ruling by Circuit Judge Debra Nelson,
although Nelson said that prosecutors won't be barred from using words
including "profiled," "wannabe cop" and "vigilante" - language the
defense argued could be inflammatory.

PICTURES: George Zimmerman Crime Scene Photos

"If I'm the state in this case, I want to make this case very simple -
it's not about Trayvon Martin or about George Zimmerman. Those two
names have a brand and they have an identity - this is a case about an
unarmed kid in the vicinity of George Zimmerman and he did absolutely
nothing to cause him to be in fear," said Brian Tannebaum, president
of the Florida Association of Bar Defense Lawyers and past president
of the Florida Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers. "If I start
adding to it, then I start opening the door to other issues and I
start creating other emotions and other thoughts about racism."

Meanwhile, the defense in their opening statement will seek to
demonstrate that Zimmerman was acting in self-defense after he was
attacked by Martin, experts say. Florida's controversial "stand your
ground" statute means that a person isn't required to retreat first
when confronted by a threat, but can respond with deadly force if they
believe their life is in danger.

"You'll have his attorneys making the argument that Trayvon presented
a threat to him, and he didn't have to back down from the threat under
Florida law," said California criminal defense attorney Michael
Cardoza.

The defense may also point to evidence including photos of George
Zimmerman bleeding from the face after the altercation to bolster
their case, and may call Zimmerman to the stand to testify during the
trial, Tannebaum said.

In another key ruling, Nelson on Saturday said that prosecution audio
experts who said Trayvon Martin was screaming in the background of a
neighbor's 911 call moments before he was killed won't be allowed to
testify at trial.

The screams could be crucial pieces of evidence for the jury in
weighing who was the aggressor in the confrontation, but experts have
come to mixed conclusions about who was screaming in the background of
the call.

One state expert claimed that he heard Martin saying "I'm begging
you." Defense experts have said the quality of the tape was too poor
to determine who was screaming, and on Thursday, defense attorney Don
West said any attempt to analyze the call reliably would be a "fool's
errand."

Nelson ruled that the methods used by the state experts aren't
reliable, but her ruling doesn't prevent the 911 calls from being
played at trial, the Associated Press reports.

Attorneys initially anticipated the trial to last two to four weeks,
but the elimination of the audio experts will likely shorten the trial
by a week, according to the AP.
By CBS News

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Snowden apparently did not board Havana flight, but may leave Moscow Tuesday

Snowden apparently did not board Havana flight, but may leave Moscow Tuesday
By Kathy Lally, Anthony Faiola and Karen DeYoung,
MOSCOW — Edward Snowden, who was expected to fly to Havana from Moscow
Monday, did not board the flight, according to journalists on the
airplane and airport officials, lending yet another twist to a
convoluted flight from U.S. authorities.

Just where he was remained a mystery. His ultimate destination was
reported to be Ecuador, where he has asked for asylum. But at a press
conference in Hanoi Monday a few hours after the plane had left
Moscow, Ecuadoran Foreign Minister Ricardo Patino said he could not
say where Snowden was.
"We are in close contact with the Russian government," he said, "but
the specific information as to his whereabouts, we cannot share that
at this time, we don't have it and we can't share it."

Patino said Ecuador was still considering Snowden's request for asylum
while also delivering what appeared to be an impassioned defense of
the former CIA contractor who has admitted leaking government secrets
about surveillance programs. Patino, whose government has been sharply
criticized for silencing journalists at home, insisted that Snowden's
case was fundamentally one based on the principle of human rights and
praised Snowden for disclosing a surveillance program that had
affected nations around the globe.

He cited U.S. refusals to extradite bankers convicted in crimes in
Ecuador, saying Quito was now free to exercise its "sovereignty" in
the same way. When asked if he was concerned about damaging his
nation's economic relationship with Washington, Patino remained
adamant.

"Ecuador puts its principles above its economic interests," he said.

Snowden's apparent failure to board the flight to Havana led to wide
speculation in Russian media, which suggested he had left by another
route, was taking Aeroflot's Tuesday flight to Hanoi instead or even
that he was being questioned by Russian intelligence, though there was
no evidence to support any theory.

Moscow itself has said little to say about Snowden's presence here.
Despite a direct request from the United States to return him to U.S.
soil to face charges of leaking government secrets, Russian officials
said Monday that they had no legal authority to detain the fugitive
former government contractor, who arrived in Moscow from Hong Kong on
Sunday and was seeking asylum in Ecuador, reportedly planning to
travel there by way of Havana.

A frustrated Secretary of State John F. Kerry said he was troubled by
the apparent refusal of fellow world powers China and Russia to
respond to espionage charges the United States had filed against
Snowden, who leaked top-secret documents about U.S. surveillance
programs.

"It is a very serious question for all of us in all our
relationships," Kerry said. "There is no small irony here," Kerry
added, posing the hypothetical question of whether Snowden sought
refuge in China and Russia "because they're such powerful bastions of
Internet freedom."

The flight to Havana was packed with journalists, who set off a
flutter of Tweets when the airplane door was closed.

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Monsters University

Over a 15-year spree, Pixar made an indelible mark on the history of
cinema. From Toy Story to Toy Story 3, Pixar's winning streak expanded
our ideas of storytelling. But Pixar's latest, Monsters University, is
more evidence Pixar's glory days might be over. It's not a masterpiece
— just one of the best films of the summer.

Minor spoilers ahead...
Monsters University is a delightful film, which manages to do the
near-impossible: create a prequel where you still feel some suspense,
even though you know how these characters are going to turn out. It
takes a lot of clichés and makes them fresh (both the monster tropes
from the first movie, and the "college movie" clichés it's taking on.)
It has a lovely eye for detail and some great character moments, along
with real surprises.

But Monsters University doesn't do for Monsters Inc. what the two Toy
Story sequels did for Toy Story. It doesn't take the themes of the
original and flip them so we see them a new way. This new film doesn't
feel like an essential part of the first movie's world, just a fun
addition. It's not quite as heart-breaking or thrilling as the
absolute best Pixar movies.You can make a case that the greatest Pixar
films did something transformative with genre — they would pick up
genre archetypes and use them to tell a story that felt personal and
surprising enough to become brand new. They expanded and redefined the
genres they touched on — for example, The Incredibles still stands
alone as an exploration of superheroes as family and as public
figures. The real legacy of Pixar is the ways in which it kept
surprising us with genres we've seen before.

So in case you missed the trailers and stuff, Monsters University is
the story of how Mike and Sulley, the main characters of Monsters,
Inc., met as college freshmen. Both Mike and Sulley want to become
"scarers," the job which Sulley has in Monsters Inc., and meanwhile
they get drawn into the rivalry between college fraternities. The
"nerd fraternity" Oozma Kappa is up against the "cool kid" fraternity
Roar Omega Roar, led by Johnny Worthington III (Nathan Fillion).

So Monsters University has two strikes against it, right off the bat:
It's a prequel, and we already know how Mike and Sulley turned out.
And it's doing a pastiche of movies that the adults in the audience
have seen before, like Revenge of the Nerds, with the monster stuff
sort of glued on to the "frat kid" stuff. The movie does a lot of gags
you've seen before, only with a slight monstery twist to them. (Sort
of the same way Toy Story 3 did a riff on "great escape" movies,
except here it's a bit less inventive.)And more than that, it feels
like there's no reason for Monsters University to exist — in the wake
of Cars 2 and the upcoming Planes, it feels as though Pixar's parent
company Disney is just monetizing its most popular properties as fast
as possible. Watching Monsters University go through the motions of
telling a rote story, you do start to get the feeling that the
studio's days of towering over all other animation companies are
waning somewhat.

And yet, this film is still better than anything else I've seen
lately. By a long chalk.

For one thing, as I mentioned, the movie does manage to pack some
surprises — and in fact, the movie finds ways to twist the knife a few
times, in ways that actually catch you off guard.

And you care enough about the characters — especially poor Mike, who
wears his heart on his sleeve — enough that you're caught up in the
suspense of their coming-of-age tale, even as a lot of the narrative
turns feel both familiar and predictable. The characters are grounded
enough, and emotionally intense enough, that you do get swept up in
their quest to get the most important job in the
monster-world.Watching Mike and Sulley start out as rivals, and turn
into friends, provides a lot of the emotional backbone of the movie,
along with Mike's desperation to prove that he's really a scary
monster. Both of those through-lines provide some lovely scenes, and
this movie never loses track of how both of these characters are
growing up, from scene to scene and moment to moment. The bits where
Sulley becomes less of a self-centered jerk, or Mike starts to
confront his limitations, are magical.

And the gorgeous visuals in this movie also help to suck you into the
story and avoid the sense of going through the motions — as you'd
expect from a college campus full of monsters, there's some great
interplay between light and shadow on the MU campus. The sound design
in this film also works with Randy Newman's drum-heavy score to create
a sense of jangling energy, as well as a world where anything can
happen. As usual with Pixar, there's a great sense of texture, with
the monsters' slimy skins, carapaces and furs feeling almost
tactile.And even though this movie won't revolutionize the Monsters
Inc. world — perhaps because the first movie ends by revolutionizing
things so thoroughly — we do get to see a new dimension to the
universe of monsters and their scaring industry. Over the course of
the movie, Mike and Sulley both study scare theory, and we delve into
notions of just what is scary, and how much a scare is dependent on
the particular audience. The "scare theory" stuff is the closest this
movie really comes to being able to expand the themes and ideas of the
first movie.

And without giving anything away, the ending of the film isn't at all
what I was expecting — there's actually a clever enough twist that you
might well be caught off guard by how things turn out.All in all,
Monsters University is a pretty terrific film — probably more solid
than Iron Man 3, and thus my favorite movie of the summer thus far.
What it isn't, is a brilliant piece of storytelling that stands up
with the first 15 years of Pixar movies. It's very much a perfectly
executed film, but it's not as amazing as the movie it's following up.
It serves its genre tropes rather than mastering them, and it fails to
transcend the Monsters Inc. legacy in the way that the Toy Story
sequels did. In other words, it's just a really superb Disney movie
rather than a great Pixar movie.

Edited to add: I changed the headline slightly to make it clearer what
I'm saying here. I do think, after Monsters University, Brave and Cars
2, that we're probably seeing the end of a "golden age" of Pixar, when
the company loomed over all other animation studios. But that really
is okay. Because even though Pixar seems to be maturing into a studio
that's more like others in the space, we're still getting great films.
And maybe maturity will have an upside we haven't seen yet.

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Latest Hollywood Movie Comming Soon " World War Z"

World War Z is basically a big-budget B-movie. A lot of the action
sequences are lifted straight out of Resident Evil, and its basic
tropes are a somewhat unstable mixture of disaster movie and political
thriller. But there are a couple of great zombie movie ideas inside
it, struggling to get out.

Max Brooks' novel World War Z is one of the greatest zombie stories
ever written, partly for reasons that make it basically unfilmable.
Brooks borrowed the novel's structure from the nonfiction books of
Studs Terkel, a journalist who specialized in interviewing people
about massive historical events and editing their stories together to
form a dazzling whole. The novel World War Z is told from the
perspectives of so many people — speaking to the narrator — that
there's no way a movie could capture all of them. Still, the idea of
turning a zombie pandemic into a war story is fascinating and could
have translated easily to film.

Unfortunately, that's not the direction that Brad Pitt and his
production company wanted to go with World War Z. They filmed a lot of
scenes dealing with the politics and war aspects of the zombie story,
and all of them wound up on the cutting room floor. Instead, we get a
really generic story about a really generic, nice white guy (Pitt) who
works as a ninja for the U.N. and loves his generic family and has a
generic goal in the movie which is: Find out what caused the zombie
outbreak in some generic and highly unspecified way.


Basically, you've got the same characters and motivations as you'd
find in Armageddon and most other disaster movies. Find a thing to
stop the thing! And, like these other movies, World War Z delivers on
special effects awesomeness even when its plot is a bit lackluster.
These zombies aren't just fast. They are fast and insectile. They
create massive swarms, climbing over top of each other to form human
bridges and ladders, or hurling themselves off buildings, splatting,
and getting up again. They aren't like the living dead so much as
humans who have become giant bugs, their bodies indestructible vectors
of disease.

The problem is that movies need more than a scary monster to make us
care. We need a little worldbuilding. Unfortunately, all we get here
is a "shut up and be scared" plot. We never understand where the
zombie plague came from, nor do we learn much about the zombies
themselves. We almost find out about the political events that led to
the eruption of the zombie plague, during a few intriguing scenes
where Pitt finds himself in Jerusalem, but then that plot is dropped.
We never get any sense of urgency about stopping the zombies either,
partly because Pitt's character is such a dull cipher. All we know is
that he has to do this mission or the UN will kick his family off the
plague-free barge where all the mucky-mucks are stationed. So
basically our "hero" isn't even interested in the fate of humanity.
He's only doing this job because the evil UN is threatening his
family.

The only time the story of the disease really pops is when we meet a
snarky scientist who is doing a nice riff on Jeff Goldblum's character
from Jurassic Park. As the action revs up, Dr. Snark gives a great
speech about how nature is a bitch and promises, "Oh yeah — we'll find
something." But this movie doesn't care about the mysteries of science
any more than it cares about political conspiracies. Then that thread
is dropped too.

So World War Z has got no political subtext, no selfless heroism, and
no scientific mystery to solve. Where does that leave us? Basically
with a bunch of chase scenes and one semi-OK, not-quite-solution to
the zombie plague (gotta leave room for a sequel!). The problem, as I
hinted earlier, is that the fun of these action scenes is halved when
you're not intrigued by any of the people in them. Looking awesome
will only get you so far. Milla Jovovich's Alice in Resident Evil
hooks us with an intriguing backstory, and Bruce Willis in Armageddon
is Bruce Fucking Willis. Yippie ki yay, motherfuckers. Brad Pitt is
just kind of mopey. And why the hell does the UN have a ninja, anyway?
One of the problems with big-budget blockbuster movies is that they
beg the question, "Was this flick worth all that cash?" It's kind of
unfair to ask, because a movie should be judged on its own merits. But
in the case of World War Z, I think the question is relevant because
it's part of a genre whose most profound and influential entries —
from Night of the Living Dead to Evil Dead and even 28 Days Later —
had tiny to medium budgets.

You might even say that low budgets are a hallmark of the zombie
genre. Part of the urgency of these movies is their visceral, DiY
feel, the sense that they were slapped together in a fever just like a
zombie. The fact that they aren't designed to be summer blockbusters
also gives their makers more freedom to tie their monsters to
political issues, or to weird scientific ideas. A genuinely B-grade
zombie movie can be spiky. It can bite.

Maybe the problem with World War Z is that zombie movies require a
certain amount of weirdness or subversiveness to succeed. Turning a
zombie pandemic into a generic disaster movie robs the zombies of
their dirty, nasty edginess and robs the disaster of its epic scope.
You could see the freaky movie this might have been flailing beneath
the surface. But unfortunately it got swept away by this fun but
forgettable bit of monster froth.

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The largest full moon of 2013, a so-called "supermoon,"

The largest full moon of 2013, a so-called "supermoon," will light up
the night sky this weekend, but there's more to this lunar delight
than meets the eye.
On Sunday, June 23, at 7 a.m. EDT (1100 GMT), the moon will arrive at
perigee — the point in its orbit bringing it closest to Earth, a
distance of 221,824 miles. Now the moon typically reaches perigee once
each month (and on some occasions twice), with their respective
distances to Earth varying by 3 percent.
But Sunday's lunar perigee will be the moon's closest to Earth of
2013. And 32 minutes later, the moon will officially turn full. The
close timing of the moon's perigee and its full phase are what will
bring about the biggest full moon of the year, a celestial event
popularly defined by some as a "supermoon."
You can watch a free webcast of 2013 supermoon full moon on SPACE.com
on Sunday at 9 p.m. EDT (0100 June 24), courtesy of the skywatching
website Slooh Space Camera.
While the exact time of the full moon theoretically lasts just a
moment, that moment is imperceptible to casual observers. The moon
will appear full a couple of days before and after the actual full
moon most will speak of seeing the nearly full moon as "full": the
shaded strip is so narrow, and changing in apparent width so slowly,
that it is hard for the naked eye to tell in a casual glance whether
it's present or on which side it is.
During Sunday's supermoon, the moon will appear about 12.2 percent
larger than it will look on Jan. 16, 2014, when it will be farthest
from the Earth during its apogee.
Supermoon's big tides
In addition, the near coincidence of Sunday's full moon with perigee
will result in a dramatically large range of high and low ocean tides.
The highest tides will not, however, coincide with the perigee moon
but will actually lag by up to a couple of days depending on the
specific coastal location. [The Moon Revealed: 10 Surprising Facts]
For example, for New York City, high water (6.3 feet) at The Battery
comes at 8:58 p.m. EDT on Sunday, or more than 12 hours after perigee.
From Cape Fear, N.C., the highest tide (6.5 feet) will be attained at
9:06 p.m. EDT on Monday, while at Boston Harbor a peak tide height of
12.3 feet comes at 12:48 a.m. EDT on Tuesday, almost 2 days after the
time of perigee.
Any coastal storm at sea around this time will almost certainly
aggravate coastal flooding problems. Such an extreme tide is known as
a perigean spring tide, the word spring being derived from the German
springen, meaning to "spring up," and is not — as is often mistaken —
a reference to the spring season.
Spring tides occur when the moon is either at full or new phase. At
these times the moon and sun form a line with the Earth, so their
tidal effects add together (the sun exerts a little less than half the
tidal force of the moon.) "Neap tides," on the other hand, occur when
the moon is at first and last quarter and works at cross-purposes with
the sun. At these times tides are week.
Tidal force varies as the inverse cube of an object's distance. We
have already noted that this month the moon is 12.2 percent closer at
perigee than at apogee. Therefore it will exert 42 percent more tidal
force at this full moon compared to the spring tides for the full moon
that will coincide with apogee next January.
Huge moon at moonrise
Usually the variation of the moon's distance is not readily apparent
to observers viewing the moon directly.
Or is it?
When the perigee moon lies close to the horizon it can appear
absolutely enormous. That is when the famous "moon illusion" combines
with reality to produce a truly stunning view. For reasons not fully
understood by astronomers or psychologists, a low-hanging moon looks
incredibly large when hovering near to trees, buildings and other
foreground objects. The fact that the moon will be much closer than
usual this weekend will only serve to amplify this strange effect.
So a perigee moon, either rising in the east at sunset or dropping
down in the west at sunrise might seem to make the moon appear so
close that it almost appears that you could touch it. You can check
out this out for yourself by first noting the times for moonrise and
moonset for your area by going to this website of moonrise times by
the U.S. Navy Oceanography Portal.
Happy moon-gazing!


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