Brutality

"Golden Door " is a movie about immigration that even Lou Dobbs can get behind. It's so hypnotically breathtaking, you don't realize you're not breathing. By the final shot, you don't realize you're crying either, but there go the tears. Written and directed by Emanuele Crialese , this is one of the most beautiful movies I've ever seen about anything. That it happens to be about the physical and emotional brutality of coming to this country a hundred years ago only enhances the achievement.

As London gears up for the 2012 Olympics, critics have their knives out. Most locals have been unable to get tickets, rents have skyrocketed, and the sports venues are draped in corporate branding. In newspaper columns and in conversation, the country is bemoaning what has happened to the Olympics: The games have become a carnival of commercialism, celebrity culture, corporate and political jostling, and security wonkery. These are hardly problems unique to the London games.

EDWARD L. GLAESER suggests that Deval Patrick has a lot to learn from economists and from the recent history of Chile, which the governor visited last month ("In economists' paradise, lessons for US," Op-ed, Dec. 19). Unfortunately, Glaeser begins by distorting Chilean history, and thus misses the lessons that should have been drawn from it. "After Pinochet took power in 1973", Glaeser writes, "he eventually turned to a cadre of free-market economists, the ‘Chicago Boys,' " who, like Glaeser, received their PhDs at the University of Chicago.

SALEM - A Salem woman accused of slashing the throats of her two young children and setting their apartment on fire was found too dangerous to be set free during a hearing Monday in Salem District Court, where prosecutors painted her as an abusive mother who regularly beat her children. Tanicia Goodwin, 25, was also ordered by Judge Michael C. Lauranzano to have no contact with her children, Jamaal, 8, and Erica, 3. She was transported to Worcester State Hospital for an evaluation to determine whether she should be held in a hospital or at MCI-Framingham, where...

ALEXANDRIA, Egypt — The victim’s lawyers in a trial of two Egyptian policemen involved in the death of a young man demanded yesterday that the defendants face torture charges in a case that has focused national attention on police brutality in Egypt. Khaled Said died June 6, and witnesses say the two policemen dragged him out of an Internet cafe in the northern port city of Alexandria and beat him to death. Two state autopsies, however, insisted Said died of suffocation after swallowing a packet of drugs.

If Hieronymus Bosch were alive today and decided to turn his hand to playwriting rather than painting, he might concoct a nightmarish vision akin to that of Mark O’Rowe’s “Terminus.’’ In a mesmerizing Abbey Theatre production that will be at the Paramount Mainstage through Sunday, O’Rowe takes us on an allegorical odyssey through the evil that men (and a couple of women) do. “Terminus’’ is extraordinarily bleak yet streaked with redemptive moments, and even some flashes of humor.

Joyce Carol Oates is a smart, bold, insightful writer, but her short stories are puzzling at best. This accomplished novelist, incisive critic, and nimble essayist often dons the cape of the Goth to write short fiction. “Sourland,’’ Oates 23d collection of stories, is by turns shadowy, cold, threatening, degrading, and brutal. The macabre narratives, including tales of vicious rape and pedophilia, are replete with graphic horror. In the title novella, “Sourland,” newly widowed Sophie Quinn copes with the first stages of shocking loneliness.

JOHANNESBURG — Angry demonstrators set fire to two government buildings yesterday in a central South African town where police beat a protester in an assault that aired on state TV and sparked accusations that police were resorting to apartheid-era brutality. The man beaten Wednesday in Ficksburg was later found dead with bullet wounds. Investigators from the Independent Complaints Directorate, which probes allegations of police brutality, are in Ficksburg to determine who took part in the beating, how the man died, and whether police are responsible...

CAIRO — Egyptian security forces hit protesters and knocked some to the ground before rounding dozens up at a demonstration yesterday against a police beating that killed a young man a week ago. The protesters were venting anger over the death of 28-year-old Khaled Said in the port city of Alexandria on June 6. Relatives, at least one witness, and human rights groups say police beat him to death and pictures of his bloody, disfigured face have...

Almost one week after it was infiltrated by an infamous group of renegade hackers, the Boston police news website went back online yesterday, police said. On Feb. 3cq, the news releases and photos that normally make up the page were replaced by a message from the group Anonymouscq criticizing the Boston Police Department for evicting Occupy Boston protesters from Dewey Square. Anonymous also inserted a video of hip-hop artist KRS-Onecq rapping about police brutality, coupled with images of confrontations between officers and civilians.

Almost one week after it was infiltrated by an infamous group of renegade hackers, the Boston police news website went back online yesterday, police said. On Feb. 3, the news releases and photos that normally make up the page were replaced by a message from a group calling itself Anonymous criticizing the Police Department for evicting Occupy Boston protesters from Dewey Square. Anonymous also inserted a video of hip-hop artist KRS-One rapping about police brutality, coupled with images of confrontations between officers and civilians.

CHARLESTON, W.Va. — Hackers affiliated with the Anonymous hacking group obtained more than 150 police officers' personal information from an old website for the West Virginia Chiefs of Police Association and posted it online. William Roper, the association's president, told the Charleston Gazette that the FBI is investigating. Roper is also the police chief of Ranson, W.Va. Roper said a group called CabinCr3w hacked the website Monday and obtained the home addresses, home phone numbers, and cellphone numbers of current and retired police chiefs.

The Boston Police Department said yesterday that it hopes to restore its Internet news blog soon, possibly today, and that it is continuing a criminal investigation into the hacking of the site, as well as other instances of tampering with department sites. "It's still a work in progress, but it's a priority," Elaine Driscoll, a department spokeswoman, said of the restoration of the site. She added in a statement, "We are working closely with federal authorities to determine the facts and circumstances of the incident.

EDWARD L. GLAESER suggests that Deval Patrick has a lot to learn from economists and from the recent history of Chile, which the governor visited last month ("In economists' paradise, lessons for US," Op-ed, Dec. 19). Unfortunately, Glaeser begins by distorting Chilean history, and thus misses the lessons that should have been drawn from it. "After Pinochet took power in 1973", Glaeser writes, "he eventually turned to a cadre of free-market economists, the ‘Chicago Boys,' " who, like Glaeser, received their PhDs at the University of Chicago.

NAIROBI, Kenya - In Africa's remotest jungle, where paved roads and telephones do not exist, a US aid group is installing new high frequency radios to help track the Lord's Resistance Army, a brutal militia that 100 US special forces troops are now helping hunt. The Ugandan rebel group is blamed for tens of thousands of rapes, mutilations, and killings over the last 26 years. The militia abducts children, forcing them to serve as soldiers or sex slaves and even to kill their parents or each other to survive.

Netflix jolted its shareholders again with a third-quarter financial report that portrayed a company in crisis. The video subscription service's latest blooper reel, released Monday, included an even larger customer exodus than the company had foreseen after announcing an unpopular price increase in July. What's worse, the report contained a forecast calling for more defections during the next few months. The backlash will deprive Netflix Inc. of some of the revenue that management had been counting on to finance the company's expansion...

THORNWOOD, N.Y. — Four college football players who were arrested after their teammate from Easton, Mass., was shot and killed by police entered not-guilty pleas yesterday, then returned to the scene of the shooting to visit a makeshift memorial. Accompanied by lawyers, the students looked silently for a few moments at flowers, a poem, and a photo of Danroy Henry that were placed on the edge of the sidewalk of the Thornwood shopping center. Henry, a 20-year-old Pace University student, was killed in the parking lot Oct. 17 by police officers who fired through the...

CINCINNATI -- A 350-pound black man died after being clubbed repeatedly by officers in a videotaped beating that raised new allegations of police brutality against blacks in Cincinnati nearly three years after the city was rocked by riots. The mayor said yesterday that the videotape showed that the nightstick-wielding officers were defending themselves. The cause of Nathaniel Jones's death on Sunday was under investigation. But preliminary autopsy results showed that the 41-year-old man had an enlarged heart, and his blood contained cocaine and PCP, or...