Roman Polanski arrested in Switzerland Jenny Percival and agencies guardian.co.uk, Sunday 27 September 2009 Article history

Roman Polanski: Zurich film festival organisers say director has been taken into custody. Photograph: Roberto Pfeil/AP  The Oscar-winning film director Roman Polanski has been taken into custody in Switzerland after travelling to collect an award at the Zurich film festival.The festival organisers, who had been due to give the 76-year-old director a lifetime achievement award, did not give details of the arrest, but it is believed to be over a 31-year-old US arrest warrant. The director fled the US in 1978 after pleading guilty to unlawful sexual intercourse with a 13-year-old girl.Polanski was detained by police yesterday as he travelled from France to Switzerland to receive his award.A Zurich police spokesman, Stefan Oberlin, confirmed Polanski's arrest, but refused to provide more details because he said it was a matter for the Swiss justice ministry. A ministry spokesman, Guido Balmer, declined to comment.In a statement, the festival organisers said they had "learned of his arrest with great dismay and sadness", but stressed that they would go ahead with a planned retrospective of his work and present the award on another date.Polanski, who directed classic films including Chinatown and Rosemary's Baby, recently sought dismissal of his case on grounds of misconduct by the late judge who arranged a plea bargain and later reneged on it.In February, Judge Peter Espinoza agreed there had been misconduct by the judge in the original case, but said Polanski must return to the US to apply for dismissal.His lawyers said he would not return because he is considered to be a fugitive. He has not set foot in the US for 30 years, and has avoided going to countries, such as the UK, that have an extradition treaty with the US.Polanski, who was born in Paris, has lived in France for the past 30 years and his career has continued to flourish.He won an Oscar for his 2002 film the Pianist, with the award collected on his behalf by the actor Harrison Ford.    

Haley BarbourThe Republican Revival Will Start in the States The former RNC chairman says the party will again have to sell ideas, not access. By STEVE MOOREHaley Barbour has a message for Republicans still dispirited by the November elections: "We've been in a lot worse shape than this. . . . When I first started working in politics during the Watergate era only 16% of Americans identified themselves as Republicans." He recalls one incident in the mid 1970s when "Mary Louise Smith, the chairman of the party, appointed a committee to change the name of the party. You can't get much lower than that." Zina SaundersThat doesn't mean the Grand Old Party will storm back into power in 2010 and 2012. "We shouldn't kid ourselves. Republicans have a whole lot of work to do to win back voters who've fled the party. I think the brand damage is much worse than in 1992," is his sobering assessment. Mr. Barbour is a political-turnaround artist -- the Lee Iacocca of party rebuilding. He took over the chairmanship of the Republican National Committee in 1993 during another one of those low points. George H.W. Bush had just mustered 38% of the vote and lost the White House to Bill Clinton. Mr. Barbour recounts that the political wise men all agreed that 1992 was a realigning election, that the GOP had become a regional party of the South, that the conservatives were devoid of ideas, and that the era of Reaganism was over. Not quite. Two years later the GOP stormed back and Mr. Barbour was one of the unsung masterminds of the 1994 Republican revolution. If Newt Gingrich was the four-star general, Mr. Barbour was the field marshal.
As we talk at the Willard Hotel in Washington, D.C., I can't help noticing that he appears to have shed a few pounds in the last few years. Could it be in preparation for a presidential run? "Hail no," he retorts in his trademark southern drawl. He self-deprecatingly informs me that "the American people aren't likely to ever elect a former Washington lobbyist as president." Perhaps not, but that didn't stop him from winning two terms as governor of Mississippi and from racking up a successful record of achievement. He's cut taxes, put the state budget in Jackson on a diet, passed one of the boldest tort reform laws in the nation, and helped bring thousands of new jobs into the state that ranks by many measures as America's poorest. He gets universal accolades for his handling of Hurricane Katrina, which obliterated whole regions of Mississippi. In contrast to Louisiana, which captured all the media attention because the botched recovery effort there, in Mississippi the reconstruction and relief efforts were a case study in government professionalism and, as he puts it, "harnessing the power of the private sector in a time of crisis." "I am a small government, rational regulation, low tax, free market capitalist. And I'm going to be one even if…

   Obama compared to Hitler US billboard compares Obama to Adolf Hitler and Vladimir Lenin. Read Article