Changing of the Guard: Chinese Opposition to Labor Camps Widens

BEIJING — It is hard to say exactly which “subversive” sentiments drew the police to Ren Jianyu, who posted them on his microblog last year, although “down with dictatorship” and “long live democracy” stand out.

In the end, Mr. Ren, 25, a college graduate from Chongqing, the southwestern metropolis, was sent without trial to a work camp based on the T-shirt that investigators found in his closet: “Freedom or death,” it said.

Last year Mr. Ren was among tens of thousands of Chinese who were dumped into the nation’s vast “re-education through labor” system, a Stalinist-inspired constellation of penal colonies where pickpockets, petitioners, underground Christian church members and other perceived social irritants toil in dismal conditions for up to four years, all without trial. With as many as 190,000 inmates at any one time, it is one of the world’s largest systems of forced labor.

But now the labor system, known by its shorthand, “laojiao,” is facing a groundswell of opposition from both inside and outside the Communist Party. Critics say the once-in-a-decade leadership transition last month, which included the demotion of the chief of the nation’s vast internal security apparatus, has created a potential opening for judicial and legal reform.

“It’s high time we demolish this unconstitutional and abusive system that violates basic human rights, fuels instability and smears the government’s image,” said Hu Xingdou, a professor at the Beijing Institute of Technology who frequently rails against the system that Mao Zedong created in the 1950s to take down suspected class enemies and counterrevolutionaries.

The calls for change go beyond longstanding advocates of political reform like Professor Hu. China’s national bar association is circulating an online petition that has been signed by thousands. Legal experts have convened seminars to denounce the system. And almost every day, it seems, the state-run news media, with the top leadership’s tacit support, report on hapless citizens ensnared by the arbitrary justice that the local police impose with the wave of a hand.

Mr. Ren’s case would probably have gone unnoticed if not for China’s increasingly emboldened human rights defenders, who showcased his plight on the Internet. Evidently prodded by the torrent of news coverage, Chongqing officials cut short his two-year sentence and freed him.

“It was a depressing, dreadful experience,” Mr. Ren said in a telephone interview this month, describing long days spent in the camp’s wire-coiling workshop.

Other examples abound. A migrant worker from Inner Mongolia was sent away for quarreling with an official at a restaurant. A mother from Hunan Province was given an 18-month sentence after she publicly protested that the men who had raped and forced her 11-year-old daughter into prostitution had been treated too leniently.

This month an 80-year-old Korean War veteran with Parkinson’s disease sobbed on national television as he described spending 18 months in a labor camp as punishment for filing local corruption complaints.

People’s Daily, the Communist Party’s mouthpiece, took aim at the system last month, saying it had become “a tool of retaliation” for local officials. In October the head of a government judicial reform committee noted a broad consensus in favor of addressing the system’s worst abuses.

And in a widely circulated recent essay, the vice president of the Supreme People’s Court, Jiang Bixin, argued that the government must act within the law if it is to survive. “Only with constraints on public power can the rights and freedoms of citizens be securely realized,” he wrote.

China’s incoming president, Xi Jinping, has not yet weighed in on the issue, but reform advocates are encouraged by a speech he gave this month talking up the widely ignored protections afforded by China’s Constitution, which include freedom from unlawful detention and the right to an open trial. “We must establish mechanisms to restrain and supervise power,” Mr. Xi said.

Until now, China’s powerful security establishment has staved off any erosion of its authority, warning of calamity if the police lose their ability to detain perceived troublemakers without the interference of judges or defense lawyers.

The Ministry of Public Security has other reasons to preserve the status quo. The system, which employs tens of thousands of people, is a gold mine for local authorities, who earn money from the goods produced by detainees. Officials also covet the bribes offered to reduce sentences, critics say, and the payments families make to ensure a loved one is properly fed while in custody.

Patrick Zuo contributed research.

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RIM shows how BlackBerry 10 touch screen keys could rival its traditional keyboards [video]

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Connecticut Shooting: Bodies Removed from School, Positively Identified

By Mike Fleeman

12/15/2012 at 10:25 AM EST

Connecticut State Police Lt. J. Paul Vance

Mary Altaffer/AP

A horrific day turned to a night of unspeakable grief as parents received formal notifications that their children were killed in the Connecticut school massacre.

The last of the dozens of bodies – most of them children – were removed by early Saturday from Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Conn.

"Our objective certainly was to positively identify the victims to try to give the families some closure," State Police Spokesman Lt. Paul Vance tells CBS News. "Our detectives worked well through the night. By early this morning, we were able to positively identify all of the victims and make some formal notification to all of the families of the victims."

The gunman, identified by multiple law enforcement sources as 20-year-old Adam Lanza, killed 20 children between the ages of 5 and 10 and six adults, before taking his own life at the school. His mother also was killed at a different location, bringing the total death toll to 28.

Eighteen children were pronounced dead at the scene and two at the hospital; six adult victims were pronounced dead at the scene, the Los Angeles Times reports.

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Fewer health care options for illegal immigrants

ALAMO, Texas (AP) — For years, Sonia Limas would drag her daughters to the emergency room whenever they fell sick. As an illegal immigrant, she had no health insurance, and the only place she knew to seek treatment was the hospital — the most expensive setting for those covering the cost.

The family's options improved somewhat a decade ago with the expansion of community health clinics, which offered free or low-cost care with help from the federal government. But President Barack Obama's health care overhaul threatens to roll back some of those services if clinics and hospitals are overwhelmed with newly insured patients and can't afford to care for as many poor families.

To be clear, Obama's law was never intended to help Limas and an estimated 11 million illegal immigrants like her. Instead, it envisions that 32 million uninsured Americans will get access to coverage by 2019. Because that should mean fewer uninsured patients showing up at hospitals, the Obama program slashed the federal reimbursement for uncompensated care.

But in states with large illegal immigrant populations, the math may not work, especially if lawmakers don't expand Medicaid, the joint state-federal health program for the poor and disabled.

When the reform has been fully implemented, illegal immigrants will make up the nation's second-largest population of uninsured, or about 25 percent. The only larger group will be people who qualify for insurance but fail to enroll, according to a 2012 study by the Washington-based Urban Institute.

And since about two-thirds of illegal immigrants live in just eight states, those areas will have a disproportionate share of the uninsured to care for.

In communities "where the number of undocumented immigrants is greatest, the strain has reached the breaking point," Rich Umbdenstock, president of the American Hospital Association, wrote last year in a letter to Obama, asking him to keep in mind the uncompensated care hospitals gave to that group. "In response, many hospitals have had to curtail services, delay implementing services, or close beds."

The federal government has offered to expand Medicaid, but states must decide whether to take the deal. And in some of those eight states — including Texas, Florida and New Jersey — hospitals are scrambling to determine whether they will still have enough money to treat the remaining uninsured.

Without a Medicaid expansion, the influx of new patients and the looming cuts in federal funding could inflict "a double whammy" in Texas, said David Lopez, CEO of the Harris Health System in Houston, which spends 10 to 15 percent of its $1.2 billion annual budget to care for illegal immigrants.

Realistically, taxpayers are already paying for some of the treatment provided to illegal immigrants because hospitals are required by law to stabilize and treat any patients that arrive in an emergency room, regardless of their ability to pay. The money to cover the costs typically comes from federal, state and local taxes.

A solid accounting of money spent treating illegal immigrants is elusive because most hospitals do not ask for immigration status. But some states have tried.

California, which is home to the nation's largest population of illegal immigrants, spent an estimated $1.2 billion last year through Medicaid to care for 822,500 illegal immigrants.

The New Jersey Hospital Association in 2010 estimated that it cost between $600 million and $650 million annually to treat 550,000 illegal immigrants.

And in Texas, a 2010 analysis by the Health and Human Services Commission found that the agency had provided $96 million in benefits to illegal immigrants, up from $81 million two years earlier. The state's public hospital districts spent an additional $717 million in uncompensated care to treat that population.

If large states such as Florida and Texas make good on their intention to forgo federal money to expand Medicaid, the decision "basically eviscerates" the effects of the health care overhaul in those areas because of "who lives there and what they're eligible for," said Lisa Clemans-Cope, a senior researcher at the Urban Institute.

Seeking to curb expenses, hospitals might change what qualifies as an emergency or cap the number of uninsured patients they treat. And although it's believed states with the most illegal immigrants will face a smaller cut, they will still lose money.

The potential impacts of reform are a hot topic at MD Anderson Cancer Center in Houston. In addition to offering its own charity care, some MD Anderson oncologists volunteer at a county-funded clinic at Lyndon B. Johnson General Hospital that largely treats the uninsured.

"In a sense we've been in the worst-case scenario in Texas for a long time," said Lewis Foxhall, MD Anderson's vice president of health policy in Houston. "The large number of uninsured and the large low-income population creates a very difficult problem for us."

Community clinics are a key part of the reform plan and were supposed to take up some of the slack for hospitals. Clinics received $11 billion in new funding over five years so they could expand to help care for a swell of newly insured who might otherwise overwhelm doctors' offices. But in the first year, $600 million was cut from the centers' usual allocation, leaving many to use the money to fill gaps rather than expand.

There is concern that clinics could themselves be inundated with newly insured patients, forcing many illegal immigrants back to emergency rooms.

Limas, 44, moved to the border town of Alamo 13 years ago with her husband and three daughters. Now single, she supports the family by teaching a citizenship class in Spanish at the local community center and selling cookies and cakes she whips up in her trailer. Soon, she hopes to seek a work permit of her own.

For now, the clinic helps with basic health care needs. If necessary, Limas will return to the emergency room, where the attendants help her fill out paperwork to ensure the government covers the bills she cannot afford.

"They always attended to me," she said, "even though it's slow."

___

Sherman can be followed on Twitter at https://twitter.com/chrisshermanAP .

Plushnick-Masti can be followed on Twitter at https://twitter.com/RamitMastiAP .

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News Analysis: China Stays Beside North Korea, a Buffer Against the U.S.

BEIJING — Even though North Korea ignored China’s appeal not to test its new longer-range missile, the new leadership here appears intent on remaining a steadfast supporter of its wayward neighbor because it considers the North a necessary buffer against the United States and its allies.

Analysts said that China’s overriding fear was of a collapse of the hard-line Communist government in Pyongyang, which could lead to the reunification of the Korean Peninsula under a government in Seoul allied with the United States. China, they said, would consider an American presence on its doorstep untenable.

But China’s unyielding support of Kim Jong-un has a serious downside, they added, because it may lead to a result nearly as unpalatable: efforts by the United States and its regional allies Japan and South Korea to contain China.

“It stirs up regional security,” said Zhu Feng, a professor of international relations at Peking University who favors reducing support for North Korea. Without naming the United States, he added that the missile launching “facilitates China-bashers to work on hard-line policies to contain China, or just balance China.”

Obama administration officials were clearly exasperated this week with China’s inability to rein in Mr. Kim, saying that they were considering a stronger military presence in the Asia-Pacific region.

Beneath the official tolerance of North Korea, a debate about the wisdom of remaining loyal to such a world outlier and its defiant young leader simmers among analysts who strive to influence China’s foreign policy.

China runs the risk, Dr. Zhu said, of being bunched together with North Korea as one of “the two bad guys.”

“I feel very frustrated,” Dr. Zhu added. “At least we should distance ourselves from North Korea. The reality is, as long as North Korea can’t change their behavior, then peace and stability on the peninsula will be increasingly vulnerable.”

China has twice asked Mr. Kim, who inherited the leadership of North Korea after the death of his father at the end of last year, not to proceed with missile tests, and twice he has rebuffed the entreaties. Shortly after he came to power, a Chinese vice minister of foreign affairs, Fu Ying, visited Pyongyang to warn him not to conduct a test. In April, Mr. Kim went ahead anyway with a rocket launching, which fizzled. Last month, Li Jianguo, a member of the Politburo, visited North Korea to again urge restraint.

Despite their displeasure, China’s leaders see little choice but to put up with such indignities.

The slight pique expressed by the Foreign Ministry on Wednesday was not a signal that China would alter its course, the analysts said, or back tougher sanctions at the United Nations.

The official reaction was “very hesitant,” said Jin Canrong, a professor of international relations at Renmin University in Beijing.

After the missile test, Washington immediately started pushing for deeper sanctions at the United Nations and for a tightening of existing sanctions that China agreed to after earlier rocket launchings.

“China will not support a resolution; it will favor a president’s statement,” said Cai Jian, the deputy director of the Center for Korean Studies at Fudan University in Shanghai. A president’s statement at the United Nations is considered a much weaker form of condemnation than sanctions.

A major reason for not backing new sanctions is the fear that they would provoke North Korea to test another nuclear weapon, a far worse prospect than the launching of an unarmed rocket like the one on Wednesday, said Jonathan D. Pollack, a North Korea expert at the Brookings Institution in Washington.

“The North Koreans demurred from a third nuclear test in April, very likely under major Chinese pressure,” Dr. Pollack said.

In 2006 and 2009, North Korea tested a nuclear weapon soon after launching missiles. Dr. Pollack said a repeat of that action would pose a major test to the Obama administration, as well as to the new Chinese leader, Xi Jinping.

“Pyongyang may have decided now is the time to put down a major marker as Obama’s second term approaches and as South Korea elects a new president,” he said.

Beyond the hard strategic questions for the new Chinese leadership, the concerns among ordinary Chinese about why China bankrolls such a ruthless government should be considered, several Chinese analysts said.

“Internally in China, many voices are questioning all this spending on rocket launches instead of on improving people’s livelihoods,” said Jia Qingguo, an expert at Peking University.

The South Korean government recently estimated that North Korea had spent $2.8 billion to $3.2 billion since 1998 on its missile program, said Stephan M. Haggard, a professor of Korea-Pacific studies at the University of California, San Diego. That amount of money would have bought enough corn to feed the country for about three years, Dr. Haggard said.

The debate within China about its relationship with North Korea stems from the unusual nature of the alliance. Fundamentally, the two governments do not like each other and harbor deep mutual suspicions, said Stephanie T. Kleine-Ahlbrandt, the China and Northeast Asia project director of the International Crisis Group in Beijing. When North Korean officials visited Singapore this year to get new ideas for Mr. Kim’s government, leaders in Beijing — who have sent teams of their own to Singapore to study its softer form of one-party leadership — became very nervous, she said.

The larger fear is that any fundamental change in North Korea could send waves of refugees into China, who would be considerably more difficult to absorb than people of other nationalities on China’s borders.

“For the Chinese,” Ms. Kleine-Ahlbrandt said, “there are fewer problems keeping North Korea the way it is than having a collapse.”

Bree Feng contributed research.

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The Hobbit Is a Great Adventure That Takes Too Long to Arrive

By Alynda Wheat

12/14/2012 at 10:00 AM EST

    

The elegance of The Hobbit J.R.R. Tolkien's rousing tale of Bilbo Baggins helping a passel of dwarves reclaim their mountain home is that the epic spans just a few hundred pages.

Moviegoers, on the other hand, could have first breakfast, second breakfast and elevenses in the nearly three hours it takes director Peter Jackson to deliver the first third of this trilogy in The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey. (Part 2 is slated for next year.)

It helps that the cast is so engaging, particularly Martin Freeman as Bilbo, a kind, fussy sort torn between the comforts of his divinely cozy hobbit hole and the promise of adventure.

And what adventure it is!

Bilbo, wizard Gandalf (Ian McKellen) and the dwarves take on Middle-Earth beasts in glorious 3D battles. (Note: Viewers prone to vertigo should see the film in the old-school 24 frames-per-second format.)

Like The Lord of the Rings, The Hobbit is violent, but there are sillier bits meant to appeal to kids. Whether they can stick it out through elevenses is another matter.

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Fewer health care options for illegal immigrants

ALAMO, Texas (AP) — For years, Sonia Limas would drag her daughters to the emergency room whenever they fell sick. As an illegal immigrant, she had no health insurance, and the only place she knew to seek treatment was the hospital — the most expensive setting for those covering the cost.

The family's options improved somewhat a decade ago with the expansion of community health clinics, which offered free or low-cost care with help from the federal government. But President Barack Obama's health care overhaul threatens to roll back some of those services if clinics and hospitals are overwhelmed with newly insured patients and can't afford to care for as many poor families.

To be clear, Obama's law was never intended to help Limas and an estimated 11 million illegal immigrants like her. Instead, it envisions that 32 million uninsured Americans will get access to coverage by 2019. Because that should mean fewer uninsured patients showing up at hospitals, the Obama program slashed the federal reimbursement for uncompensated care.

But in states with large illegal immigrant populations, the math may not work, especially if lawmakers don't expand Medicaid, the joint state-federal health program for the poor and disabled.

When the reform has been fully implemented, illegal immigrants will make up the nation's second-largest population of uninsured, or about 25 percent. The only larger group will be people who qualify for insurance but fail to enroll, according to a 2012 study by the Washington-based Urban Institute.

And since about two-thirds of illegal immigrants live in just eight states, those areas will have a disproportionate share of the uninsured to care for.

In communities "where the number of undocumented immigrants is greatest, the strain has reached the breaking point," Rich Umbdenstock, president of the American Hospital Association, wrote last year in a letter to Obama, asking him to keep in mind the uncompensated care hospitals gave to that group. "In response, many hospitals have had to curtail services, delay implementing services, or close beds."

The federal government has offered to expand Medicaid, but states must decide whether to take the deal. And in some of those eight states — including Texas, Florida and New Jersey — hospitals are scrambling to determine whether they will still have enough money to treat the remaining uninsured.

Without a Medicaid expansion, the influx of new patients and the looming cuts in federal funding could inflict "a double whammy" in Texas, said David Lopez, CEO of the Harris Health System in Houston, which spends 10 to 15 percent of its $1.2 billion annual budget to care for illegal immigrants.

Realistically, taxpayers are already paying for some of the treatment provided to illegal immigrants because hospitals are required by law to stabilize and treat any patients that arrive in an emergency room, regardless of their ability to pay. The money to cover the costs typically comes from federal, state and local taxes.

A solid accounting of money spent treating illegal immigrants is elusive because most hospitals do not ask for immigration status. But some states have tried.

California, which is home to the nation's largest population of illegal immigrants, spent an estimated $1.2 billion last year through Medicaid to care for 822,500 illegal immigrants.

The New Jersey Hospital Association in 2010 estimated that it cost between $600 million and $650 million annually to treat 550,000 illegal immigrants.

And in Texas, a 2010 analysis by the Health and Human Services Commission found that the agency had provided $96 million in benefits to illegal immigrants, up from $81 million two years earlier. The state's public hospital districts spent an additional $717 million in uncompensated care to treat that population.

If large states such as Florida and Texas make good on their intention to forgo federal money to expand Medicaid, the decision "basically eviscerates" the effects of the health care overhaul in those areas because of "who lives there and what they're eligible for," said Lisa Clemans-Cope, a senior researcher at the Urban Institute.

Seeking to curb expenses, hospitals might change what qualifies as an emergency or cap the number of uninsured patients they treat. And although it's believed states with the most illegal immigrants will face a smaller cut, they will still lose money.

The potential impacts of reform are a hot topic at MD Anderson Cancer Center in Houston. In addition to offering its own charity care, some MD Anderson oncologists volunteer at a county-funded clinic at Lyndon B. Johnson General Hospital that largely treats the uninsured.

"In a sense we've been in the worst-case scenario in Texas for a long time," said Lewis Foxhall, MD Anderson's vice president of health policy in Houston. "The large number of uninsured and the large low-income population creates a very difficult problem for us."

Community clinics are a key part of the reform plan and were supposed to take up some of the slack for hospitals. Clinics received $11 billion in new funding over five years so they could expand to help care for a swell of newly insured who might otherwise overwhelm doctors' offices. But in the first year, $600 million was cut from the centers' usual allocation, leaving many to use the money to fill gaps rather than expand.

There is concern that clinics could themselves be inundated with newly insured patients, forcing many illegal immigrants back to emergency rooms.

Limas, 44, moved to the border town of Alamo 13 years ago with her husband and three daughters. Now single, she supports the family by teaching a citizenship class in Spanish at the local community center and selling cookies and cakes she whips up in her trailer. Soon, she hopes to seek a work permit of her own.

For now, the clinic helps with basic health care needs. If necessary, Limas will return to the emergency room, where the attendants help her fill out paperwork to ensure the government covers the bills she cannot afford.

"They always attended to me," she said, "even though it's slow."

___

Sherman can be followed on Twitter at https://twitter.com/chrisshermanAP .

Plushnick-Masti can be followed on Twitter at https://twitter.com/RamitMastiAP .

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Wall Street steady on "cliff" apprehension, Apple drops

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Stocks were little changed on Friday, with the Nasdaq weighed by a 3-percent drop in shares of tech giant Apple, amid investor worries about a lack of progress by politicians in ongoing fiscal negotiations.

Apple was down 2.8 percent at $515.11 as UBS cut its price target to $700 from $780. The stock has tumbled in recent months for a variety of reasons, including investors locking in profits ahead of scheduled capital-gains increases for next year.

President Barack Obama and House of Representatives Speaker John Boehner held a "frank" meeting Thursday to try to break an impasse in negotiations over the "fiscal cliff," tax hikes and spending cuts set to kick in early in 2013.

"The uncertainty that (the fiscal talks) is creating is basically holding the markets hostage in the short term," said Andres Garcia-Amaya, global market strategist at J.P. Morgan Funds, in New York.

Frustration has mounted over the lack of progress in the discussions, with market participants' worries reflected in a 0.6 percent drop in the S&P 500 on Thursday. Investors are concerned that going over the cliff could tip the economy back into recession. While a deal is expected to ultimately be reached, a drawn-out debate - like the one seen over 2011's debt ceiling - can erode confidence.

Still, expectations of an eventual agreement have helped the S&P 500 bounce back over the last month, and on Wednesday, the index hit its highest intraday level since late October. For the year, the S&P has advanced more than 12 percent.

"For the end of this year, I wouldn't expect a lot of big decisions by investors," Garcia-Amaya said. "It's been a fairly good year for equities and for that reason a lot of people don't want to be a hero going into the end of the year."

The Dow Jones industrial average <.dji> edged up 11.05 points, or 0.08 percent, at 13,181.77. The Standard & Poor's 500 Index <.spx> slipped 2.49 points, or 0.18 percent, to 1,416.96. The Nasdaq Composite Index <.ixic> lost 12.62 points, or 0.42 percent, to 2,979.54.

Best Buy Co Inc slid more than 15 percent to $11.90 after it agreed to extend the deadline for the company's founder to make bid.

Consumer prices fell in November for the first time in six months, indicating U.S. inflation pressures were muted. A separate report showed manufacturing grew at its swiftest pace in eight months in December.

Meanwhile, data out of China was encouraging for its key trading partners, including the U.S., and for the prospects for global growth. It showed manufacturing in the world's second-largest economy grew at its fastest pace in 14 months in December.

(Editing by Bernadette Baum)

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Gérard Depardieu Called ‘Pathetic’ for Leaving France

PARIS — Gérard Depardieu, one of France’s best-known actors, has been accused by the country’s Socialist government of lacking patriotism after he moved to Belgium apparently in a bid to avoid the taxes for which France is also renowned.

Mr. Depardieu’s departure for Néchin, a village just over the border, has drawn mockery and outrage from politicians and the news media at a time of economic belt-tightening, stagnating growth and rising taxes. On Wednesday, Prime Minister Jean-Marc Ayrault weighed in, calling Mr. Depardieu’s choice “rather pathetic.”

“He’s a great star, everyone loves him as an artist,” Mr. Ayrault told the France 2 television channel on Wednesday, but “to pay a tax is an act of solidarity, a patriotic act.”

Mr. Depardieu, 63, is among a handful of celebrities and wealthy business executives who have left France since the May election of President François Hollande, a Socialist.

To reduce the budget deficit and the country’s debt, Mr. Hollande has put in place a 75 percent marginal tax rate for incomes above 1 million euros, or $1.3 million — a largely symbolic measure that will affect only a few thousand individuals, he has said — and has announced additional taxes that are expected to raise 20 billion euros next year.

While Mr. Depardieu has not commented publicly about what led to his move, it is widely suspected that he was attracted more by the Belgian tax code than, say, the weather. (Belgium, wedged between France and the Netherlands, is less sunny and warm than soggy and gray.) Residents there pay no wealth tax and no capital gains tax on stock sales. In France, residents are required to pay a 0.25 percent wealth tax on assets valued at more than 1.3 million euros; those with more than 3 million euros in assets pay twice that.

Mr. Depardieu will by no means be the only Frenchman in Néchin, where he has reportedly bought a home.

Néchin’s mayor, Daniel Senesael, told the French news media that 27 percent of residents are French.

Bernard Arnault, the billionaire chief executive of the luxury group LVMH, was pilloried in the news media in September when it was revealed that he had requested Belgian citizenship.

Mr. Arnault said the request was not for tax purposes, but the left-leaning newspaper Libération featured a front-page headline that read, in polite translation, “Beat it, rich jerk!” (LVMH promptly pulled its advertising from the newspaper and Mr. Arnault filed a lawsuit charging the paper with public insult.)

On Tuesday, the newspaper featured Mr. Depardieu on its front page, along with an editorial deploring his “absence of moral sense” and insisting that the flight of the rich represents “a danger for democracy and solidarity.”

For months there have been reports of wealthy French people taking up residence outside the country, particularly in London, whose mayor, Boris Johnson, has called Mr. Hollande’s tax plan “tyranny.”

French celebrities have left the country for tax reasons for years, though, and it is not altogether clear how politicians and the news media select the ones they vilify, or how countries choose who among them is worthy of citizenship.

The singer Johnny Hallyday, a major French star whose popularity has lasted for decades, has been based in Switzerland for years and once requested Belgian citizenship. He still plays to sellout crowds in France. The actor Alain Delon lives in Switzerland as well, but serves in the nation of his birth as the head of the jury for the Miss France competition.

Appearing on a popular television talk show this week, Mr. Delon was asked for an assessment of Mr. Depardieu’s choice. He smiled and said, “Let’s be serious, I can’t allow myself to make a judgment.”

Everyone laughed.

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Paul McCartney Goes Grunge & 12-12-12 Concert for Sandy Relief's Top Five Moments

By Maggie Coughlan

12/13/2012 at 11:00 AM EST

Mick Jagger and Kanye West

Larry Busacca/Getty; Dave Allocca/Startraks

Let's hear it for New York!

On Wednesday night, some of music's biggest stars came together for the 12-12-12 Concert for Sandy Relief at Madison Square Garden.

The concert – which included performances from Bruce Springsteen, Paul McCartney, Alicia Keys, Kanye West and more – raised money to benefit those affected by the superstorm in New York, New Jersey and Connecticut.

With an all-star lineup, every moment was better than the last but here are our five favorites.

Mick Jagger's Still Got It
Maroon 5 wrote "Moves Like Jagger" for a reason! The 69-year-old Rolling Stones frontman proved on Wednesday night that age is just a number when he performed "You Got Me Rocking" and "Jumpin' Jack Flash."

New Jersey Pride
Two of New Jersey's proudest sons Bon Jovi and Springsteen shared the stage for Bon Jovi's "Who Says You Can't Go home." As they sang the lyrics together, Madison Square Garden witnessed a moment the Garden State won't ever forget.

Kanye West Wears a Kilt
Always fashion forward, West had social media buzzing on Wednesday night when he performed in a leather skirt – his outfit choice even spawned a parody Twitter account, Kanye's Skirt. But girlfriend Kim Kardashian chimed in to let fans know she was supportive of the rapper's ensemble. "Awwwwwwww I'm so excited right now!!!!! He looks so cute!!" she Tweeted.

Chris Martin's Semi-Solo Act
The Coldplay frontman left his band at home to perform "Viva La Vida" followed by "Us Against the World" on piano. When Michael Stipe joined the singer for a duet of R.E.M.'s "Losing My Religion," a new take on the 1991 hit was born.

Nirvana and The Beatles Weren't That Different After All
When news first broke that McCartney would lead a Nirvana reunion 18 years after Kurt Cobain took his own life, fans had no idea what to expect. But Sir Paul delivered! "We're gonna do the song we jammed now," McCartney said introducing a new song with grunge-inspired vocals. Although Dave Grohl energized the set with his drumming, no one seemed to be having more fun than McCartney himself.

But not everyone was impressed by the performance. TMZ reports Cobain's widow Courtney Love was "not amused" by the reunion, saying "if John [Lennon] were alive it would be cool."

And, you can still donate: Visit www.robinhood.org/rhsandy to help.

Krist Novoselic, Dave Grohl and Paul McCartney

Kevin Mazur / WireImage

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