International

Ow-ah. Six months after Vanity Fair was launched in Germany as a weekly magazine, Der Spiegel reports Condé Nast is running into major problems with Deutsche-Vanity Fair. A few of the highlights:

• Condé Nast is spending €
  500,000 (US$670,000) weekly on the magazine, which is also suspected of exaggerating a sold print run of 120,000.

• The usually mild-mannered Spiegel accuses Vanity Fair EIC Ulf Poschardt of “flamboyant arrogance” and his staff of “burn-out syndrome.”
• A photo shoot in Dresden is a sign of the editors’ “desperate search for glamour.”
• Editors are complaining that the magazine lacks “political relevance and journalistic seriousness.”
• In a German version of the Bono/Africa VF stunt, German pop star Herbert Gronemeyer guest edited an issue of the magazine and “received little in return.”
• Poschardt claims overblown expectations as a “result of the magazine’s association with the legendary US edition of Vanity Fair.”
• German Condé Nast publisher Bernd Runge dodged questions about the magazine’s circulation.

Spiegel‘s verdict:

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It’s not just D.C. Madams slamming ABC News: Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney condemned a lightning rod report by ABC News investigative wunderkind Brian Ross about President Bush’s authorization of covert action against Iran.

Romney:

“I was shocked to see the ABC News report regarding covert action in Iran. The reporting has the potential of jeopardizing our national security. To put it quite plainly, it has the potential of affecting human life, we may never know.”

ABC News’ response:

“In the six days since we first contacted the CIA and the White House, at no time did they indicate that broadcasting this report would jeopardize lives or operations on the ground. ABC News management gave them the repeated opportunity to make whatever objection they wanted to regarding our report. They chose not to.”

The story, by the way, has drawn over 1,500 comments.

EARLIER:

Sharmeen Obaid Chinoy, an award-winning filmmaker for the Discovery Channel, PBS and New York Times TV among other media outlets, is asking for help in an effort to save Ghufran Haider, a young Pakistani featured in Obaid Chinoy’s 2005 film Pakistan’s Double Game who saved hundreds of lives by stopping a suicide bomber in Karachi. Haider, who testified against the bomber, is in Dubai, but faces probable death in Pakistan if he returns.

Haider’s visa expires May 19.

Obaid-Chinoy’s memo:

Sharmeen Obaid Chinoy, an award-winning filmmaker for the Discovery Channel, PBS and New York Times TV among other media outlets, is asking for help in an effort to save Ghufran Haider, a young Pakistani featured in Obaid Chinoy’s 2005 film Pakistan’s Double Game who saved hundreds of lives by stopping a suicide bomber in Karachi. Haider, who testified against the bomber, is in Dubai, but faces probable death in Pakistan if he returns.

Haider’s visa expires May 19.

Obaid-Chinoy’s memo:

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AOL, via Facebook, has obtained Cho Seung Hui‘s Richard McBeef, a play he supposedly wrote while at Virginia Tech. A student explains the eery background to AOL:

A major part of the playwriting class was peer reviews. We would write one-act plays and submit them to an online repository called Blackboard for everyone in the class to read and comment about in class the next day. Typically, the students give their opinions about the plays and suggest ways to make it better, the professor gives his insights, then asks the author to comment about the play in class.

When we read Cho’s plays, it was like something out of a nightmare. The plays had really twisted, macabre violence that used weapons I wouldn’t have even thought of. Before Cho got to class that day, we students were talking to each other with serious worry about whether he could be a school shooter. I was even thinking of scenarios of what I would do in case he did come in with a gun, I was that freaked out about him. When the students gave reviews of his play in class, we were very careful with our words in case he decided to snap. Even the professor didn’t pressure him to give closing comments.

EARLIER:

George W. Bush made a surprise visit to the New York Stock Exchange floor — only the second sitting president to do so

CNN’s transcript:

LISOVICZ: President Bush, welcome to Wall Street. Welcome to Wall Street.

GEORGE W. BUSH, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: Good to be here, thanks.

LISOVICZ: What do you think of the reception here?

BUSH: I’m impressed and grateful.

LISOVICZ: Do you think it’s warmer than on Capitol Hill right now?

Kyra?

PHILLIPS: Susan Lisovicz, I knew you could do it. You of all people got the president live on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange.

LISOVICZ: I don’t know — I don’t know if you saw the glance he gave me after I asked him if he would have an easier time with Capitol Hill, but it was sort of a suspicious glance, and he covered the microphone.

PHILLIPS: He covered your microphone?

LISOVICZ: He did. He did. He said — he is — probably about ten feet away from me right now. Anyway, it’s a historic day on Wall Street, and I’m moving forward because I’m being pushed forward.

Bush, of course, has had a rather checkered history with CNN microphones, and, for that matter, so has Kyra Phillips.

After the shellacking they took last week, where are Republicans to turn?

To Ruuuuuuudy, that’s where.

AP — Former New York City mayor Rudy Giuliani, a moderate Republican best known for his stewardship of the city after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, has taken the first step in a 2008 presidential bid, GOP officials said Monday. The former mayor filed papers to create the Rudy Giuliani Presidential Exploratory Committee, Inc., establishing a panel that would allow him to raise money for a White House run and travel the country.

RELATED:

The spat over a Johns Hopkins study of the dead in Iraq that many call credible but the president shot down has made its way to MSNBC’s Blogging Baghad (we saw it on E&P): Says NBC correspondent Jane Arraf:

“I’m more puzzled by comments that the violence isn’t any worse than any American city. Really? In which American city do 60 bullet-riddled bodies turn up on a given day? In which city do the headless bodies of ordinary citizens turn up every single day? In which city would it not be news if neighborhood school children were blown up? In which neighborhood would you look the other way if gunmen came into restaurants and shot dead the customers? … “I don’t know a single family here that hasn’t had a relative, neighbor or friend die violently. … Imagine the worst day you’ve ever had in your life, add a regular dose of terror and you’ll begin to get an idea of what it’s like every day for a lot of people here.”

Washington Post correspondent Rajiv Chandrasekan has an essay on mediabistro.com recounting the state of terror there. His book, by the way (excerpted), just earned a National Book Award nomination.

“The best rapper is white, the best golfer is black,” said Peter Guber, former CEO of Sony Pictures, producer of such films as Batman and The Color Purple and founder of Mandalay Entertainment. “And in the White House two are named Bush and Dick and last year they cleansed their Colon.”

That awkward bit was but one of the countless prepared lines to come from the stage at the Javits Center on Friday during The Power Within, a daylong series of motivational talks in front of the thousands who shelled out $861.58 to $1,403.45 to sit on folding chairs in what amounted to an airplane hanger to hear Guber and Survivor producer Mark Burnett, former Disney head Michael Eisner, Bill Clinton and Lance Armstrong — all, with the exception of Burnett, successful retirees who’ve discovered the racket that is the corporate speaking circuit.

Each give their variation on the “tapping your inner strength” theme.

“The movie business is collapsing all around,” Guber said. “Unless we develop a new story, we will be victimized by it.” Guber, who resembled a slightly more coherent Robin Williams, said Hollywood’s penchant for putting out sequels is because “we are habituated to the certainty” rather than the uncertainty of something new.

Eisner — who appeared to be delivering the same speech he’s been giving since the mid-90s — pointed to Euro Disney, the micromanaged budget of the 1987 film Outrageous Fortune and Who Framed Roger Rabbit? as examples of Disney’s “management within a box” approach to success.

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Malachy McCourt, author and radio host running for New York governor on the Green Party ticket, has received an endorsement from a national political figure: Cindy Sheehan, the mother turned anti-war activist who lost her son to the war in Iraq in 2004 and has since made it her mission to not let George Bush forget.

Sheehan says she supports McCourt because “the people of New York want peace.” McCourt says he is accepting Sheehan’s endorsement because she is the “Apostle of Peace.” Sheehan is listed by her nickname, “Peace Mom,” on a press materials provided by McCourt’s camp.

Peace all around, then.

Yes, that Ricky Martin.

Martin takes a hard line on the trafficking of kids, and offers ABCNews.com an exclusive op-ed on the subject, including how he saved three would-be underaged prostitutes in Calcutta:

There on the street, I met three little girls. They were street kids. Three of thousands who roam the alleys scraping out an existence at an age when most kids are learning to ride a bike. They were headed for a life of forced prostitution, when my team intervened.