Chicago’s Cook County is first metro area to levy gun tax

CHICAGO (Reuters) – The county that includes Chicago on Friday approved a tax on firearms to help pay the healthcare costs from gun violence, the first major U.S. metropolitan area to impose such a tax as a form of gun control.

Under the plan, Cook County, Illinois, will impose a $ 25 tax on each firearm sold. The tax is expected to raise $ 600,000 in revenue in 2013.

With Friday’s vote, the nation’s third most populous county with nearly 5.2 million residents becomes the first major U.S. metropolitan area to impose a tax as a form of gun control, according to the Law Center to Prevent Gun Violence.

The Cook County board of commissioners voted 9 to 7 to approve the firearms tax.

Cook County Board President Toni Preckwinkle, who proposed the handgun tax, had earlier this week abandoned an additional proposed tax of 5 cents a bullet because the tax in some cases would have exceeded the price of ammunition.

Preckwinkle said that 670 victims of gun violence had been treated by the county’s health system last year. The average cost per patient was $ 52,000.

There have been 443 murders in Chicago so far this year, surpassing last year’s total of 435 and 22 percent more than in the same period a year ago, according to Chicago police.

Taxes on buyers or sellers of guns or ammunition have been proposed but failed in six states, including California, Louisiana, Massachusetts, New Jersey, Oklahoma and Pennsylvania, according to the Law Center to Prevent Gun Violence.

Tennessee has a hunting-related 10-cent tax on sealed packages of shotgun shells and cartridges that applies to sellers. The money is used to support wildlife resources.

Richard Pearson, executive director of the Illinois State Rifle Association, has called the Cook County proposal another scheme to punish law-abiding firearm owners and dealers. He said it would prompt people to purchase weapons elsewhere.

(Editing by Greg McCune and Andrew Hay)

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Lloyds PPI bill up another £1bn

1 November 2012 Last updated at 08:18 ET

Continue reading the main story

Lloyds Banking Group has set aside a further £1bn to cover compensation for customers who were mis-sold payment protection insurance (PPI).

It brings the bank’s PPI bill to £5.275bn so far.

The further provision means Lloyds has been pushed into a loss of £144m for the third quarter of the year.

After Barclays’ recent decision to set aside a further £700m for PPI compensation, the banking industry’s bill now stands at just over £12bn.

Despite the news, Lloyds’ shares rose 7% in morning trading, as investors took heart from the bank’s underlying financial position.

Lloyds described the further PPI provision as a disappointing “legacy issue”.

“The volume of complaints received in relation to legacy PPI business during the third quarter declined when compared to the previous quarter,” said Lloyds Banking Group’s chief executive Antonio Horta-Osorio.

“However, it remained above the level which we anticipated at the time of our half-year results and as a result the group believes it is appropriate to increase its provision for expected PPI costs by £1bn.

“This increases the expected cost of contact and redress, including administration expenses, to £5.3bn,” he explained.

The bank warned that the eventual final bill for PPI was still uncertain, suggesting it may rise further.

Marc Gander of the Consumer Action Group said banks still had no incentive to avoid bad behaviour in the future.

Continue reading the main story

Ian Pollock Business reporter, BBC News

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When, in April 2011, the banks lost their High Court challenge to the FSA’s rules on PPI mis-selling, the compensation cost was put at £4.5bn.

It has been rising ever since.

Initial estimates by the FSA itself were based on the assumption that just 20% of PPI victims would claim.

It seems that many more people – millions in fact – are now doing so.

In some cases they have been encouraged by claims management firms.

In others cases, the individual payments have been huge.

What the saga shows is just how much profit banks were able to squeeze out of their customers simply by getting them to buy an insurance policy.

“What the banks don’t reveal is that while they have had their hands on their customers’ money – the ill-gotten money – they have been lending it out at interest rates as high as 28% – compound,” he said.

“Yet they are only being required to refund at 8% simple.”

More complaints

The cost to the banking industry of compensating customers is rising fast, as complaints from aggrieved customers continue to pour in.

The Financial Ombudsman Service (FOS), which handles grievances that banks reject, has now received half a million complaints from disgruntled people who claim they have been unfairly denied any compensation.

PPI was widely sold by banks in the last decade, and the insurance was supposed to make sure that mortgage and credit card borrowers would be able to repay their loans if they fell ill or lost their jobs.

However, it became apparent that many customers had been mis-sold the insurance because they either did not need it in the first place, or would have been automatically excluded from making a valid claim, typically because they were self-employed.

Under instruction from the financial authorities, the industry is now going back through past sales and alerting customers to the possibility that they can now make a claim for compensation – a process which is generating a huge bill for the UK’s banks.

MoneyBoomerang, an online claims management company, said banks like Lloyds were still stalling on many legitimate claims.

“Lloyds has made a huge additional provision and yet it is not showing any interest in dealing with the very valid claims it is receiving,” said the company’s managing director, Craig Lowther.

“We are just about to send roughly 8,000 Lloyds cases to the FOS. We firmly believe these are valid claims and if so they will cost the bank millions.”

But Lloyds replied that it every incentive to settle legitimate complaints, because banks have to pay for each case that goes to the ombudsman.

“We… have to pay the costs of each claim (£850) as well as incremental administrative costs regardless of who the FOS upholds in favour of,” a bank spokesman pointed out.

Improvement

Despite the loss in the third quarter, Lloyds said its underlying financial position was improving.

Although the bank’s income has fallen by 14% in the first nine months of the year, this was outstripped by further benefits from cost-cutting – which saw 4,796 jobs cut – and a reduction in the amount of money it has had to set aside for losses on past loans that have turned bad.

Those provisions in its accounts are down to £4.4bn, from £7.4bn in the first nine months of the previous financial year.

With restrictions on sales commission on financial policies being imposed by the Financial Services Authority (FSA) early in 2013, Lloyds has decided to stop offering independent financial advice to anyone who has less than £100,000 to invest.

“Customers with over £100,000 of investible assets who would benefit from holistic financial planning will be referred to our private banking service,” the bank said.

“For customers who hold less than £100,000 in savings and investments we will not offer an investment advice service but will continue to give these customers information and help with savings products on a non-advised basis.”

Lloyds is still partly owned by the UK taxpayer following its bail-out at the height of the financial crisis in 2008.

As such, it is still not paying any dividends to its investors.

The bank is still in the process of negotiating the sale of 632 of its branches to the Co-operative Bank.

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Canada will push to keep bank capital rules on schedule

OTTAWA (Reuters) – Canada will urge all countries to stick to the agreed schedule for implementing tougher bank capital rules at a November 4-5 meeting of finance ministers and central bankers from the Group of 20 nations, a senior finance ministry official said on Thursday.

The so-called Basel III rules are the world’s regulatory response to the financial crisis, forcing banks to triple the amount of basic capital they hold in a bid to avoid future taxpayer bailouts.

They were to be phased in from January 2013 but areas such as the United States and the European Union are not yet ready and U.S. and British supervisors have criticized them as too complex to work.

The Canadian official, who briefed reports ahead of the meeting on condition that he not be named, said it was imperative that the rules, the timelines and the principles behind them be respected and said Finance Minister Jim Flaherty would make that view known to his G20 colleagues.

Canada sees the European debt crisis as the biggest near-term risk to the global economy, and it also expects the U.S. debt crisis to be top of mind at the talks, the official said.

But the meeting takes place just before the U.S. presidential election and U.S. Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner will be absent, so it remains unclear how much the G20 can pressure Washington on that front.

Some other countries have also scaled back their delegations, raising doubts about how meaningful the meeting will be.

The official dismissed that argument, saying high-level officials substituting for their ministers allowed for extremely important issues to be addressed anyway.

He said holding each country around the table accountable to its past commitments helped keep the momentum going toward resolving global economic problems.

(Reporting by Louise Egan; Writing by David Ljunggren; Editing by M.D. Golan)

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Microsoft pushes new Windows to developers

SEATTLE (Reuters) – Days after launching Windows 8, Microsoft Corp is mounting a strong campaign to win over the software developers it needs to kick-start its new operating system.

A lack of apps is Microsoft’s Achilles heel as it attempts to catch Apple Inc and Google Inc in the rush toward mobile computing.

Windows 8, the new Surface tablet and a range of Windows-based phones – all unveiled in the past week – are designed to close that gap, but the world’s largest software company still needs to convince developers to recreate the thriving ‘ecosystem’ that made PCs so successful.

“Please go out and write lots of applications,” Microsoft Chief Executive Steve Ballmer pleaded with 2,000 developers on Tuesday, kicking off an annual, four-day meeting at its campus near Seattle.

The event, called ‘Build,’ is the equivalent of Apple’s Worldwide Developer Conference and Google’s I/O event.

Microsoft gave each paying attendee one of its Surface tablets and 100 gigabytes of free space on its SkyDrive online storage service. On top of that, handset partner Nokia threw in a free Lumia 920 smartphone running Windows Phone 8.

The unprecedentedly generous give-away signals the intent of what Microsoft openly calls “evangelism.” Most developers at the meeting, who paid up to $ 2,000 to attend, are already converted to the Windows religion. But this year there is a feeling that Microsoft can re-establish itself as a relevant platform for developers.

“The sessions are overflowing. Everybody wants to learn,” said Greg Lutz, product manager at development tools company ComponentOne, who is attending the conference.

“The Surface is really exciting. It’s been interesting to see people that would normally be critics of Microsoft surprised to see how good it is,” said Lutz, whose company makes features that developers can use in apps, such as calendars or charts.

Microsoft recognizes it needs apps to flesh out its new online Windows Store and make Windows 8 machines more attractive to users, said Russ Whitman, chief strategy officer at Ratio Interactive, a design agency that helps companies create apps.

“The catalog (of apps) is where they are weak, there’s no doubt,” he said. “But if Microsoft stays focused on quality not quantity, they can win.”

DEVELOPER DOUBTS

When Windows 8 launched on Friday, some major content providers had prominent apps in the Windows store, such as Netflix Inc, the New York Times and Rovio’s Angry Birds Space. But big names such as Facebook and Twitter were missing.

Twitter moved to rectify that on Tuesday, announcing that a native Windows app would be rolled out “in the months ahead.” Dropbox, a fast-growing cloud storage service, also announced it would soon have a Windows app, as did online payment firm PayPal and sports network ESPN.

But Facebook, which now has more than 1 billion users, has not yet made public any plans for a Windows app, despite the fact Microsoft is a minor shareholder.

And Microsoft still has to overcome indifference from many developers who do not see demand from users or simply do not have the resources to build Windows apps alongside iOS and Android.

“Windows 8 is getting good reviews and the tile user interface is a great fit with our geo-visual content,” said Jason Karas, CEO at website Trover, where users can share photos of interesting discoveries. “It’s on the roadmap for Trover, but we are still a very lean team, so we’re hesitant to support a third platform until we have all the innovations we want to see in iPhone and Android in place.”

Microsoft has yet to persuade other influential online services, for example car-rental firm Zipcar or real estate information firm Zillow, to develop for Windows 8.

To get more developers on board, Microsoft is spending this week demonstrating how it is making it easier to develop apps for Windows and get them into the real world.

A key part of that is a new set of tools tying in its Azure cloud service, which allows Windows apps to easily harness data stored in remote servers.

“Some of the new changes are pretty incredible and are going to make developing, especially some of the mobile apps, much easier,” said Mike Cousins, a software developer following the conference by webcast from Calgary, Canada.

“It just makes it super-easy to integrate mobile clients into your application,” said Cousins, who is developing Shuttr, a site for photographers to display and sell their work. “It’s been reduced from probably a week’s work to minutes.”

400 MILLION NEW MACHINES

Microsoft’s best argument to developers is the sheer size of the Windows user base.

Microsoft sold 4 million upgrades to Windows 8 in its first four days, a mere fraction of the 670 million or so machines running Windows 7. Ballmer said there would be 400 million new devices running Windows next year, including PCs, tablets and phones, and the company would be marketing heavily to consumers.

That is an attractive audience for developers, and Whitman at Ratio Interactive said he saw many new faces at Microsoft’s event this week who previously were more interested in web-based apps and other platforms.

“There’s a new generation of developers that can build on Windows 8 that have been building using JavaScript and HTML,” he said. “Seeing some of those developers show up and talk about building apps using other languages is pretty cool. It’s a whole different group than Microsoft has traditionally been able to court.”

One Wall Street analyst said developers may even be tempted to switch back to Microsoft after working with Apple’s iOS platform.

“There does seem to be some excitement about the new operating system and many of the new devices that are coming to market,” said Jason Maynard, an analyst at Wells Fargo Securities. “We have heard some developers talk about ‘re-Microsofting’ and moving from their Macs for app development.”

Cousins said that once developers see the user base for Windows 8 grow, the momentum will start to have an effect.

“All the new PCs people buy will be Windows 8, and people will start demanding Windows 8 apps from companies, and then they will start making them,” he said. “I think we’ll see a wave of apps coming out pretty soon.”

(Reporting By Bill Rigby; Editing by Steve Orlofsky)

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‘Wilfred’ Gets 3rd Season From FX

LOS ANGELES (TheWrap.com) – “Wilfred” will bark once more.

FX has given the series, which stars Elijah Wood as a struggling young man who befriends his neighbor’s curiously human-like dog, a third season, the cable network said Wednesday.

The 13-episode third season will debut in June 2013.

In addition to the third-season order, writers/producers Reed Agnew and Eli Jorné have been promoted to executive producers and showrunners for the show. David Zuckerman, who adapted the series for American television from the Australian show of the same name and served as executive producer/showrunner for the first two seasons, will remain as executive producer.

“Wilfred’ averaged 2.63 million total viewers for its second season, with 1.71 million of them in the advertiser-coveted 18-49 demographic.

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Massachusetts tightens rules for compounding pharmacies

BOSTON (Reuters) – Massachusetts adopted new regulations on Thursday that it said will allow it to keep a closer eye on compounding pharmacies, a class of drug supplier linked to the U.S. meningitis outbreak that has so far killed 29 people.

The state, home to the New England Compounding Center that produced the injectable steroids at the heart of the outbreak, said the new rules give it the authority to track the volume and distribution of drugs that compounding pharmacies sell to determine if they are operating like manufacturers.

Compounding pharmacies – which are meant to assemble the raw ingredients of any medication one prescription at a time, not in industrial scale runs – had prior to this year’s outbreak largely escaped the U.S. Food and Drug Administration‘s attention.

“Together with our federal partners, we will ensure that Massachusetts fulfills its responsibility in overseeing this transforming industry,” said Dr. Lauren Smith, interim commissioner of the Massachusetts Department of Public Health.

The outbreak of fungal meningitis was triggered by steroids used as a treatment for back pain. Health authorities have said the New England Compounding Center failed to make medications in sterile conditions in its facility in Framingham, Massachusetts, outside Boston.

Massachusetts has closed three compounding pharmacies since the start of the outbreak.

(Reporting By Scott Malone. Editing by Andre Grenon)

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Canadian dollar ends near flat after GDP data shows contraction

TORONTO (Reuters) – The Canadian dollar weakened below parity against the U.S. currency before clawing back to end little changed on Wednesday after data showed the Canadian economy contracted unexpectedly in August.

The currency weakened to a session low shortly after the gross domestic product data pointed to slower growth in the third quarter and supported the Bank of Canada‘s message that interest rate hikes are not imminent. It later pared those losses.

“We are pretty much ending unchanged from where we started the day, but we saw a 50-point range and that’s the largest we’ve seen in a week,” said Dave Bradley, director of foreign exchange trading at Scotiabank.

The Canadian dollar ended the North American session at C$ 0.9990 to the greenback, or $ 1.0010, compared with C$ 0.9993, or $ 1.0007, at Tuesday’s close.

Bradley said the market was still suffering from poor liquidity due to the absence of many U.S. traders recovering from monster storm Sandy.

“Despite the U.S. equity markets opening again, a lot of New York based participants are out of the market … I think liquidity and general flow is at a minimum,” Bradley said.

With October 31 marking the end of the financial reporting year for Canadian banks, Bradley noted the Canadian currency was virtually unchanged from a year ago within a few basis points of parity.

Mark Chandler, head of Canadian fixed income and currency strategy at Royal Bank of Canada, said the currency could be weighed down by the August GDP numbers, which showed a 0.1 percent contraction, through to the end of the week.

“It’ll linger for a little bit, the only thing that could change the tune on this is we have payrolls,” he said.

Canada and the United States are set to release monthly employment data on Friday.

U.S. equity markets were mostly flat on Wednesday, opening for the first time this week after shutting their doors ahead of Hurricane Sandy. <.N>

With the GDP data backing up recent Bank of Canada comments that rate rises are “less imminent”, the price of Canadian government debt turned positive after the data, especially at the front end of the curve, and outperformed U.S. Treasuries.

The two-year bond was up 5 Canadian cents to yield 1.076 percent, while the benchmark 10-year bond rose 20 Canadian cents to yield 1.788 percent.

Overnight index swaps, which trade based on expectations for the central bank’s key policy rate, showed that after the data traders pulled their bets on the possibility of a rate hike in late 2013.

(With additional reporting by Alastair Sharp; Editing by Jeffrey Hodgson and Chizu Nomiyama)

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Clinton calls for overhaul of Syrian opposition

ZAGREB (Reuters) – The United States called on Wednesday for an overhaul of Syria‘s opposition leadership, saying it was time to move beyond the Syrian National Council and bring in those “in the front lines fighting and dying”.

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, signaling a more active stance by Washington in attempts to form a credible political opposition to Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, said a meeting next week in Qatar would be an opportunity to broaden the coalition against him.

“This cannot be an opposition represented by people who have many good attributes but who, in many instances, have not been inside Syria for 20, 30, 40 years,” she said during a visit to Croatia.

“There has to be a representation of those who are in the front lines fighting and dying today to obtain their freedom.”

Clinton’s comments represented a clear break with the Syrian National Council (SNC), a largely foreign-based group which has been among the most vocal proponents of international intervention in the Syrian conflict.

U.S. officials have privately expressed frustration with the SNC’s inability to come together with a coherent plan and with its lack of traction with the disparate internal groups which have waged the 19-month uprising against Assad’s government.

Senior members of the SNC, Free Syrian Army (FSA) and other rebel groups ended a meeting in Turkey on Wednesday and pledged to unite behind a transitional government in coming months.

“It’s been our divisions that have allowed the Assad forces to reach this point,” Ammar al-Wawi, a rebel commander, told Reuters after the talks outside Istanbul.

“We are united on toppling Assad. Everyone, including all the rebels, will gather under the transitional government.”

Mohammad Al-Haj Ali, a senior Syrian military defector, told a news conference after the meeting: “We are still facing some difficulties between the politicians and different opposition groups and the leaders of the Free Syrian Army on the ground.”

Clinton said it was important that the next rulers of Syria were both inclusive and committed to rejecting extremism.

“There needs to be an opposition that can speak to every segment and every geographic part of Syria. And we also need an opposition that will be on record strongly resisting the efforts by extremists to hijack the Syrian revolution,” she said.

Syria’s revolt has killed an estimated 32,000. A bomb near a Shi’ite shrine in a suburb of Damascus killed at least six more people on Wednesday, state media and opposition activists said.

NEW LEADERSHIP

The meeting next week in Qatar’s capital Doha represents a chance to forge a new leadership, Clinton said, adding the United States had helped to “smuggle out” representatives of internal Syrian opposition groups to a meeting in New York last month to argue their case for inclusion.

“We have recommended names and organizations that we believe should be included in any leadership structure,” she told a news conference.

“We’ve made it clear that the SNC can no longer be viewed as the visible leader of the opposition. They can be part of a larger opposition, but that opposition must include people from inside Syria and others who have a legitimate voice which must be heard.”

The United States and its allies have struggled for months to craft a credible opposition coalition.

U.S. President Barack Obama’s administration has said it is not providing arms to internal opponents of Assad and is limiting its aid to non-lethal humanitarian assistance.

It concedes, however, that some of its allies are providing lethal assistance – a fact that Assad’s chief backer Russia says shows western powers are intent on determining Syria’s future.

Russia and China have blocked three U.N. Security Council resolutions aimed at increasing pressure on the Assad government, leading the United States and its allies to say they could move beyond U.N. structures for their next steps.

Clinton said she regretted but was not surprised by the failure of the latest attempted ceasefire, called by international mediator Lakhdar Brahimi last Friday. Each side blamed the other for breaking the truce.

“The Assad regime did not suspend its use of advanced weaponry against the Syrian people for even one day,” she said.

“While we urge Special Envoy Brahimi to do whatever he can in Moscow and Beijing to convince them to change course and support a stronger U.N. action we cannot and will not wait for that.”

Clinton said the United States would continue to work with partners to increase sanctions on the Assad government and provide humanitarian assistance to those hit by the conflict.

(Additional reporting by Ayla Jean Yackley; editing by Andrew Roche)

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RIM starts carrier testing on BlackBerry 10 devices

TORONTO (Reuters) – Research In Motion has started carrier testing of its new line of BlackBerry 10 devices ahead of the launch of the devices in the first quarter of 2013, the company said on Wednesday.

“In the last week, BlackBerry 10 achieved lab entry with more than 50 carriers, a key step in our preparedness for the launch of BlackBerry 10 in the first quarter of 2013,” said RIM’s Chief Executive Thorsten Heins, in a brief statement.

Waterloo, Ontario-based RIM is seeking to turn around its faded fortunes with the launch of the BB10 devices, as its aging line-up of BlackBerry devices loses ground to Apple’s iPhone and Samsung’s line of Galaxy products, especially in the key North American and European markets.

(Reporting by Euan Rocha; Editing by Janet Guttsman)

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A Minute With: Rapper RZA putting on “Iron Fists” for new movie

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) – Rapper and music producer RZA is best known as the leader of the hip-hop group the Wu-Tang Clan which also includes such popular members as Method Man, Ghostface Killah and the late Ol’ Dirty Bastard.

RZA branched out into film, taking on small acting roles and scoring music, including the soundtrack for Quentin Tarantino‘s “Kill Bill: Vol. 1.”

Now, nearly a decade later, 43-year-old RZA has combined his childhood love of martial arts movies to co-write with Eli Roth the feature film “The Man With the Iron Fists,” which he also directs and acts in the title role.

Shot on location in China, and co-starring Russell Crowe and Lucy Liu, Iron Fists is set during the 19th century and sees several groups of warriors and assassins descend on a village in search of gold. The quiet and unassuming local blacksmith (RZA) ends up being the village defender.

RZA, whose real name is Robert Fitzgerald Diggs, sat down with Reuters in Hollywood to talk about the film and the future of the Wu-Tang Clan.

Q: You had to pull double duty, working simultaneously in front and behind the camera. How did you balance that?

A: “My spirit had to be extra strong to pull this off. It was difficult because in the morning (as the director) I’m worrying about everybody else, I’m talking fast. Then I have to get ready for the scene and I gotta sync my voice down to this guy. I gotta sync my spirit to him. He doesn’t smile once in the film. I smile. I’m not this morbid dude. He’s almost empty.”

Q: This is your biggest acting role to date. What did you learn as an actor?

A: “The thing about playing him that I could attest to as an actor was that I was lonely in China. I was personally lonely. And I think that shows on screen (in the character).”

Q: You’re in an exotic location with Russell Crowe and some of the biggest names in martial arts. How could you be lonely?

A: “I had no love, yo. You know what I mean? Going into a massage parlor is not gonna give you no love. I was yearning for it. For a brief minute there, I learned why actors fall in love with their co-stars.”

Q: How’s that?

A: “Because the only girl I had was (co-star/love interest) Jamie Chung. We all went out one night after shooting and Jamie had a guy friend with her. I looked over and I was so jealous. I felt weird. I told my buddy, ‘I’m about to punch this guy in the face!’ In that moment, I just felt that she was my woman. And the sad thing for me is, it would have been a one way street because she wasn’t interested in me at all.”

Q: Looking back on your first experience directing a studio movie, what do you think?

A: “It was hard work. It was 18 hour days. It was cold. The food was terrible sometimes and the language was an issue. But I kept it fun. I didn’t let nothing deter me from this path. I’m grateful and happy I had a chance to learn this craft and express it. I feel that out of everything I do as an artist – I make music, I write lyrics, I’m into fashion and clothing – filmmaking is the perfect medium and accumulates it all. I found what I should be doing. I matured into being this kind of person.”

Q: So many members of the Wu-Tang Clan are doing their own thing. Will you be assembling again soon for another album?

A: “Only time will tell. For now, I will say Iron Fists is Wu-Tang. We have all the members participating on the soundtrack. And if you look closely, you’ll notice that when (Rick Yune’s character) needs a second suit of knives, there are W’s on that second suit. You gotta look closely though. So the Wu-Tang is there. I made it subtly into the film so fans can enjoy it and feel the energy.”

Q: Some groups have their time in the spotlight and disappear. Others manage to evolve and stay relevant. Where is Wu-Tang at?

A: “To me, film is the medium that Wu-Tang needs to be at. I don’t think Wu-Tang needs to be in clubs while we gettin’ drunk and dancing. We need to be in theaters now where we sitting with our families and really appreciating our childhood in a different way. This is the reason why (movies like) ‘Iron Man’, ‘Captain America’, ‘Thor’, ‘The Avengers’ all work. Because we are adults who read comics and now we want our children to understand what we love.”

Q: So Iron Fists is the beginning of that for Wu-Tang – having others understand and appreciate the martial arts you all love?

A: “If Iron Fists goes over well and people accept it, we got great ideas for part two already. We’ve got a great sequel for all the characters and back stories that are so remarkable.”

Q: Sounds like you’re creating your own Marvel universe in a sense.

A: “Essentially, yes.”

(Reporting by Zorianna Kit, editing by Jill Serjeant)

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