‘Gomorra’ takes Grand Prix at Cannes

An Italian bestseller about the Camorra mafia in Naples made its film debut at Cannes on May 18 and won the festival’s Grand Prix award on Sunday. “Gomorra,” written by 28-year-old Naples native Roberto Saviano, has sold more than one million copies since its publication in Italy two years ago; Saviano has been under police protection nearly ever since.

Soon after the book came out, filmmaker Matteo Garrone decided he wanted to make it into a film, and focused on five characters whose paths crossed with the Camorra.

“It's an apocalyptic, hopeless film,” said Garrone, who shot it in utmost secrecy in Naples mainly with non-professional actors in poor neighborhoods including the Camorra bastion of Scampia. “I shot very violent, atrocious scenes, but the one that moved me the most shows two youths who have always been friends but are forced to go separate ways because they belong to different clans.”

Garrone’s film adaptation is in competition at the Cannes Film Festival. He told the Hollywood Reporter what he would like people to take away from the film:

I think I would want people to understand that these things are really happening. Did you know someone is murdered in Naples every three days? It’s real. But I would like people to also understand that these people are regular people, not monsters. You and I could be doing the same thing if we had been born into that situation. It’s a complex set of points, much more complex than a simple Good vs. Evil.

Report: No Mafia involvement in tennis

And speaking of the mafia, a review by the International Tennis Federation and others out last week reported that there’s no Mafia influence, Italian, Russian or otherwise, in the outcomes of professional tennis matches.

“We do not doubt that criminal elements may be involved in seeking to subvert or corrupt some players or players’ support staff; that may even involve organized criminal gangs, but to elevate that suspicion to a claim of ‘Mafia’ involvement is, in our view, a distortion of the facts and is positively damaging to the sport,” the report said.

What the four-month review did find, however, was that while “professional tennis is neither systematically nor institutionally corrupt,” steps should be taken to protect players from corrupt approaches. The review found five potential threats to the sport: corrupt practices by players and others regarding gambling, breaches of the rules regarding tanking, misuse of inside information, violation of credentials and illegal or abusive behavior towards players. Among the report’s recommendations was the need to establish a new, uniform anti-corruption program.

The review began in January after events connected to gambling in tennis came to light: An UK-based online betting site last year voided all bets on a match involving Nikolay Davydenko last year after bettors were seen to be putting down 10 times the amount of usual bets on one of Davydenko’s August matches. Since then, other players have said they have been approached by people trying to influence a match. Belgian Gilles Elseneer said he was offered – and turned down – €100,000 to lose a first-round Wimbledon match against an Italian player in 2005. Five players, all Italians, have been fined or suspended for betting on tennis.

New phishing scam tries to lure iTunes suckers

A new phishing scam is targeting the world’s largest music store – iTunes – reports Computerworld, MacNN and other techie sites.

People began receiving spammed messages yesterday (May 19) telling them that they must correct a problem with their iTunes account, said Andrew Lochart, an executive at e-mail security vendor Proofpoint Inc.
A link in the spam leads to a site posing as an iTunes billing update page; that phony page asks for information, including credit card number and security code, Social Security number and mother's maiden name.

The theft attempt is a new twist on the usual phishing attack, said Lochart. "We've gotten used to seeing the usual companies and brands attacked," he said, "like PayPal, eBay and Citibank. But we've never seen Apple as the target."

In a way, said Lochart, the phishing campaign is almost a compliment. "It's probably indicative that the bad guys see Apple's online presence as large enough to be a target. It's part and parcel of the success that Apple has enjoyed lately."

US Senate OKs anti-drug money for Mexico

The US Senate approved $350 million to help Mexico fight its drug war on May 22, and also approved an additional $100 million for Central American countries – as well as for the Dominican Republic and Haiti – that are facing the same problems.

The amounts, which face additional discussion as well as a possible presidential veto, were $100 million less than the Bush administration’s original idea of $500 million for Mexico and $50 million for Central America. The Senate also inserted a clause into the bill that would mean one quarter of the money would be withheld until the US State Department had figured that Mexico had met certain human rights markers.


…at issue is the performance of Mexico’s army and the police, which have been accused by human rights organizations of engaging in abuses as they chase down the country’s drug cartels.

“Human rights abuses in the army are routinely investigated by the military itself, and that leads to impunity,” said Tamara Taraciuk, Mexico researcher for Human Rights Watch. “The big issue is accountability.”

Since President Felipe Calderón of Mexico started his drug war in 2007, more than 200 law enforcement officers have been killed, among them at least two dozen top commanders. The overall body count is estimated to be 1,300 people so far this year, on track to exceed the roughly 2,500 drug-related killings in 2007.

More background came from the Times on Monday, in a story about police killings in Mexico’s drug war. Meanwhile, the country’s attorney general told the press on May 23 that homicides related to organized crime have jumped 47 percent this year from last year, just before announcing that four severed heads had been found in ice chests outside a roadside convenience store in the northern state of Durango. (The severed heads gambit has been part of the Mexican drug war since at least 2006; by October of that year, 17 heads had turned up in the home state of President Calderon alone.)

The attorney general, Eduardo Medina Mora, also put the drug war’s body count at 4,152, since Calderon took office in December 2006. Some 450 of those were police, soldiers, prosecutors or investigators. This was the first time that official Mexico had released any figures on the numbers of people killed since the drug war began.

Two senior cops killed in North Caucasus

In other violence news, police in Russia reported that two of their own had been assassinated in the north Caucasus region over the weekend.

Late Saturday night, police say gunmen in Dagestan shot an anti-organized crime officer, and shot and killed a watchman at the car wash where the attack had taken place. The next day, in Kabardino-Balkaria (just north of Georgia), gunmen shot an anti-corruption officer outside a restaurant.

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