Scott Neeson Left Hollywood to Save Kids in Cambodia's Slums

Scott Neeson's life in Hollywood was dreamy – he had the million-dollar salary, the yacht, the A-list contacts and a packed social calendar.

But after he stepped into a nightmare in Cambodia's Steung Meanchey garbage dump in December 2003, he walked away from all his wealth to help some of the poorest children in the world.

At the dump in the Cambodian capital of Phnom Penh he saw a girl, dressed in rags, picking through syringes and broken glass. Her name, Neeson learned through an interpreter, was Srey Nich. She was 9 and lived in the dump with her mother and younger sister; there they collected scraps, which they sold for money to buy food.

"How could anyone survive here?" Neeson recalls thinking. "I couldn't look away."

So, Neeson, 53, gave up his Hollywood life and never looked back. Once president of 20th Century Fox International, overseeing films from Titanic to X-Men, the Scottish-born executive drove a Porsche and lived in ritzy Brentwood.

Today, he lives in a two-story home that doubles as office space for his nonprofit Cambodian Children's Fund. Since 2004, Neeson's charity has helped house, educate and provide health care for more than 1,450 children in the country's most desperate slums.

"Scott is a remarkable human being who put his life on the line to help children in Cambodia who had no hope," says Dr. Jay Winsten, associate dean of the Harvard School of Public Health. "Now they have a future."

Neeson says that his life is better now because of his decision.

"I miss a lot of things about Hollywood." he says, "but I wouldn't change this for the world."

Poverty To Riches

Neeson never imagined much of a future for himself. Growing up in a working-class neighborhood in Elizabeth, Australia, where his father worked for the Department of Defense and his mother as a cleaning lady, he was a frail kid, unhappy both at home and in school.

"A lot of teachers said I'd be unemployed, spend my life on welfare," he says.

He dropped out of high school and found work delivering movie posters to theaters, working his way up to projectionist and then assistant to the director of movie programming, eventually landing the position of managing director at an Australian film distributor that later merged with Sony. By 1993 he was vice president of international marketing for Fox and moved to America, ultimately being promoted to president in 2003.

"Scott was a major driving force," says former Fox colleague Gina Kilberg, now senior vice president of international media at Sony. "He was very motivated to be successful."

Scott Neeson at a fundraiser for his organization in 2012

Joe Scarnici / Getty

And along with success came lavish perks. "Cindy Crawford lived two doors down from me," he says, laughing. "For someone who'd been told over and over he'd never amount to anything, to earn a million dollars and have this great lifestyle was something I'd never dreamed of."

Life-Changing Trip

The excesses of that life came into sharp focus on his second trip to Phnom Penh just a few months after his first. He had returned to the dump and was trying to help three sick children when he got a call on his cell phone. It was an agent whose star client was having a meltdown before boarding his private jet because it wasn't properly stocked with his favorite amenities.

"The actor said, 'My life wasn't meant to be this difficult.' The kids I was with were very sick and here's this movie star yelling," says Neeson. "If I needed a sign, that was it."

These days Neeson (who's lived in Cambodia for the past 10 years) is as driven as he ever was, only about different things. He starts work at dawn with a cup of coffee from his espresso machine – his one luxury – and leaves the country only for fund-raising trips. He uses his formidable negotiating skills to persuade desperate and starving parents to enroll their kids in his school or bring a sick baby to his clinic.

"I guess I identify with [the kids] never believing they could do anything with their lives," he says. "They've been through so much, but they're so hugely energetic and joyful. I've got more love in my life than I ever thought existed. My fear is what would have happened to me if I was still living a life all about me."

For the road he did take, Neeson only need thank Srey Nich, that first little girl from the dump. Using his own money, Neeson got Srey Nich and her family out of the now-closed dump and into a house. She then became one of the original students at Neeson's CCF school. Today, 18 years old and planning for college next year, she says Neeson changed everything for her.

"The dump was a very bad, dirty place," she says. "Now my life has changed. I can speak English with you, I have the opportunity to go to school. Everything is different."

How He's Helping

• More than 1,450 students attend the school, which supplements public education – and nearly all stay on.

• After learning cooking and customer-service skills, about 100 students have landed jobs in restaurants and hotels.

• Three full-time doctors and seven nurses treat more than 3,000 patients a month at the free medical clinic.

Know a hero? Send suggestions to heroesamongus@peoplemag.com. For more inspiring stories, read the latest issue of PEOPLE magazine

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New whooping cough strain in US raises questions

NEW YORK (AP) — Researchers have discovered the first U.S. cases of whooping cough caused by a germ that may be resistant to the vaccine.

Health officials are looking into whether cases like the dozen found in Philadelphia might be one reason the nation just had its worst year for whooping cough in six decades. The new bug was previously reported in Japan, France and Finland.

"It's quite intriguing. It's the first time we've seen this here," said Dr. Tom Clark of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

The U.S. cases are detailed in a brief report from the CDC and other researchers in Thursday's New England Journal of Medicine.

Whooping cough is a highly contagious disease that can strike people of any age but is most dangerous to children. It was once common, but cases in the U.S. dropped after a vaccine was introduced in the 1940s.

An increase in illnesses in recent years has been partially blamed on a version of the vaccine used since the 1990s, which doesn't last as long. Last year, the CDC received reports of 41,880 cases, according to a preliminary count. That included 18 deaths.

The new study suggests that the new whooping cough strain may be why more people have been getting sick. Experts don't think it's more deadly, but the shots may not work as well against it.

In a small, soon-to-be published study, French researchers found the vaccine seemed to lower the risk of severe disease from the new strain in infants. But it didn't prevent illness completely, said Nicole Guiso of the Pasteur Institute, one of the researchers.

The new germ was first identified in France, where more extensive testing is routinely done for whooping cough. The strain now accounts for 14 percent of cases there, Guiso said.

In the United States, doctors usually rely on a rapid test to help make a diagnosis. The extra lab work isn't done often enough to give health officials a good idea how common the new type is here, experts said.

"We definitely need some more information about this before we can draw any conclusions," the CDC's Clark said.

The U.S. cases were found in the past two years in patients at St. Christopher's Hospital for Children in Philadelphia. One of the study's researchers works for a subsidiary of Johnson & Johnson, which makes a version of the old whooping cough vaccine that is sold in other countries.

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JournaL: http://www.nejm.org

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Wall Street opens flat after claims, sales data

NEW YORK (Reuters) - U.S. stocks opened flat on Thursday after a trend gauge in weekly jobless claims signaled modest economic improvement and retailers posted mixed monthly sales.

The Dow Jones industrial average <.dji> was down 11.06 points, or 0.08 percent, at 13,975.46. The Standard & Poor's 500 Index <.spx> was down 0.67 point, or 0.04 percent, at 1,511.45. The Nasdaq Composite Index <.ixic> was down 1.68 points, or 0.05 percent, at 3,166.80.

(Reporting by Ryan Vlastelica; Editing by Kenneth Barry)

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IHT Rendezvous: Turkey Hints at a Breakup With Europe

LONDON — A half century after taking the first steps toward becoming an integral part of Europe, Turkey may be ready to give up.

After heavy hints that Ankara is looking eastwards to a closer alliance with Asia, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, the prime minister, said this week that membership in the European Union was not a must for Turkey.

“It is not the Apocalypse if they do not let us in the E.U.,” Mr. Erdogan told reporters during a visit to Budapest on Wednesday, as he launched his latest broadside against the Union’s alleged delaying tactics to keep his country out.

His remarks followed a news conference earlier this week in Prague, where Mr. Erdogan described the delay in granting membership to Turkey as “unforgivable.”

These and similar expressions of frustration have come as Turkey approaches the 50th anniversary of an agreement with what was then the European Economic Community, which was to have led to eventual full membership in the bloc.

Mr. Erdogan set the tone in a television interview last month in which he accused the E.U. of dragging its feet because Turkey was an Islamic nation.

As my colleague Andrew Finkel wrote from Istanbul, the prime minister also “threw the diplomatic equivalent of a cream pie” into the debate by suggesting Turkey join the Shanghai Cooperation Organization instead.

Membership of the S.C.O., which groups Russia, China and central Asian states, is not widely viewed as a viable alternative to joining Europe. Andrew wrote that Mr. Erdogan’s proposal prompted Turkish columnists to ask whether he might be bluffing in an attempt to put pressure on the Europeans.

The same question was posed this week by Pravda.ru, a Russian news Web site: “The first thought about the purpose of such statements is the fact that Turkey is trying to express its disappointment with the stalled negotiations on accession to the E.U.”

But it did not rule out the possibility that Mr. Erdogan might be seeking power “wherever his country’s economic strength is consistent with its geopolitical needs as a global player,” in contrast to a weak Europe that was preoccupied with its internal problems.

Washington has suggested that Turkish membership in the S.C.O., a security organization viewed as an anti-American bulwark in Central Asia, might be problematic in view of the Turkish role in N.A.T.O.

“Obviously it would be interesting, given the fact that Turkey is also a N.A.T.O. member,” Victoria Nuland, the State Department spokeswoman, said last week.

Hugh Pope, the International Crisis Group’s project director in Turkey, suggested that Mr. Erdogan was courting popularity by bashing the Union.

Turks are frustrated not only by delays in the membership process, he told Rendezvous, but also by the draconian visa regulations they face when traveling to Europe. Potshots aimed at Turkey by European critics were also deeply offensive to Turks, he said.

“But joining the E.U. is not rocket science,” he added, emphasizing that Turkey had to meet the requirements of the club if it wanted to join. This would include making domestic reforms and changing its policy on Cyprus, an E.U. state that it refuses to recognize.

Mr. Erdogan’s recent remarks on Europe might not indicate that Turkey is quite ready to break off the world’s longest engagement.

Murat Yetkin, of the Turkish daily newspaper Hurriyet, commented on Wednesday: “It is…clear that Turkey-E.U. relations cannot go on like this any longer; another chapter this year, a pointless agreement the next.”

However, he wrote, “it seems that neither Turkey nor the E.U. wants to be the first to declare divorce. Perhaps because both sides know that it would be a strategically wrong move.”

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Snoop Dogg Gets the Party Started with Ben Affleck and Jennifer Lawrence

Caught in the Act

02/06/2013 at 06:00 AM EST

Ben Affleck and Jennifer Lawrence, inset: Snoop Lion (Dogg)

Valerie Goodloe/PictureGroup; Frederick M. Brown/Getty

Guess the "O" in "O.G." stands for Oscar.

Ben Affleck and Jennifer Lawrence both attended the Hollywood Reporter's Nominees' Night 2013 at Spago in Beverly Hills on Monday.

It was a low-key affair at first, with Affleck holding court in a central area of the soiree, where he was animated while chatting with people and seemed excited and genuinely happy.

The Argo star and director, looking handsome in a suit, also obliged guests who approached him for photos.

Lawrence was spotted embracing her Silver Linings Playbook costar Julia Stiles. "You're so stunning!" Stiles told Lawrence just before taking a snapshot together.

As the evening continued, it was clear that Lawrence was the darling of event. Fellow guests were going up and telling her she is beautiful and they're so proud of her and Lawrence was ever the gracious guest, chatting with anyone who approached her.

But it wasn't until Snoop Lion (Dogg) arrived, who went by the deejay name Snoopadelic, that the party really went into full gear. After a lengthy intro that included a clip-filled video, Snoop emerged, gave an intro of his own – he praised Argo and shouted for Affleck to come take a photo with him before the night's end – and began playing an eclectic mix of songs, which included everything from Pat Benatar to 2 Chainz.

– Dahvi Shira

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Critics seek to delay NYC sugary drinks size limit

NEW YORK (AP) — Opponents are pressing to delay enforcement of the city's novel plan to crack down on supersized, sugary drinks, saying businesses shouldn't have to spend millions of dollars to comply until a court rules on whether the measure is legal.

With the rule set to take effect March 12, beverage industry, restaurant and other business groups have asked a judge to put it on hold at least until there's a ruling on their lawsuit seeking to block it altogether. The measure would bar many eateries from selling high-sugar drinks in cups or containers bigger than 16 ounces.

"It would be a tremendous waste of expense, time, and effort for our members to incur all of the harm and costs associated with the ban if this court decides that the ban is illegal," Chong Sik Le, president of the New York Korean-American Grocers Association, said in court papers filed Friday.

City lawyers are fighting the lawsuit and oppose postponing the restriction, which the city Board of Health approved in September. They said Tuesday they expect to prevail.

"The obesity epidemic kills nearly 6,000 New Yorkers each year. We see no reason to delay the Board of Health's reasonable and legal actions to combat this major, growing problem," Mark Muschenheim, a city attorney, said in a statement.

Another city lawyer, Thomas Merrill, has said officials believe businesses have had enough time to get ready for the new rule. He has noted that the city doesn't plan to seek fines until June.

Mayor Michael Bloomberg and other city officials see the first-of-its-kind limit as a coup for public health. The city's obesity rate is rising, and studies have linked sugary drinks to weight gain, they note.

"This is the biggest step a city has taken to curb obesity," Bloomberg said when the measure passed.

Soda makers and other critics view the rule as an unwarranted intrusion into people's dietary choices and an unfair, uneven burden on business. The restriction won't apply at supermarkets and many convenience stores because the city doesn't regulate them.

While the dispute plays out in court, "the impacted businesses would like some more certainty on when and how they might need to adjust operations," American Beverage Industry spokesman Christopher Gindlesperger said Tuesday.

Those adjustments are expected to cost the association's members about $600,000 in labeling and other expenses for bottles, Vice President Mike Redman said in court papers. Reconfiguring "16-ounce" cups that are actually made slightly bigger, to leave room at the top, is expected to take cup manufacturers three months to a year and cost them anywhere from more than $100,000 to several millions of dollars, Foodservice Packaging Institute President Lynn Dyer said in court documents.

Movie theaters, meanwhile, are concerned because beverages account for more than 20 percent of their overall profits and about 98 percent of soda sales are in containers greater than 16 ounces, according to Robert Sunshine, executive director of the National Association of Theatre Owners of New York State.

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Follow Jennifer Peltz at http://twitter.com/jennpeltz

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Wall Street to open lower after Tuesday rally, results eyed

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Stocks were poised to open lower Wednesday, indicating the S&P 500 may retreat as it faces resistance to further gains beyond five-year highs in the wake of a 1-percent rally on Tuesday.

A 6-percent advance this year so far has lifted the S&P 500 index to its highest since December 2007, while the Dow <.dji> briefly climbed above 14,000, making it a challenge for investors to continue pushing the equity market upward amid a dearth of fresh trading incentives.

Walt Disney Co beat estimates for quarterly adjusted earnings and said it expected the next few quarters to be better, with a stronger lineup of movies and rising attendance at its theme parks. Shares advanced 2.8 percent to $55.81 in premarket trading.

"You knew a correction was coming; the question was whether they were going to tease you and get it close and then start selling it off or get it up to 14,000 and then start to make a move to the sell side," said Gordon Charlop, managing director at Rosenblatt Securities in New York.

"We got a quick move and it's really just not healthy for markets to go one way, so the idea that a little bit of a correction is due isn't troublesome to me at all."

According to Thomson Reuters data through Tuesday morning, of 278 companies in the S&P 500 <.spx> that have reported earnings, 68.7 percent have exceeded analysts' expectations, above a 62 percent average since 1994 and 65 percent over the past four quarters. In terms of revenue, 66 percent of companies have topped forecasts.

In another positive sign for profits, fourth-quarter earnings for S&P 500 companies are now expected to grow 4.5 percent, according to the data, above a 1.9 percent forecast at the start of the earnings season.

S&P 500 futures fell 6 points and were below fair value, a formula that evaluates pricing by taking into account interest rates, dividends and time to expiration on the contract. Dow Jones industrial average futures lost 51 points, and Nasdaq 100 futures declined 9.75 points.

The benchmark S&P index rose 1.04 percent Tuesday, its biggest percentage gain since a 2.5-percent advance on January 2, when legislators sidestepped a "fiscal cliff" of spending cuts and tax hikes that could have hurt a fragile U.S. economic recovery.

Visa , the world's largest credit and debit card network, is expected to report earnings per share of $1.79 for its first quarter, up from $1.49 a year earlier. Smaller rival MasterCard recently reported better-than-expected results but said its revenue growth could slow in the first half of the year due to economic uncertainty.

Ralph Lauren Corp climbed 5.5 percent to $174 in premarket trading after the fashion company and retailer reported holiday quarter sales and profits that showed renewed momentum.

Time Warner Inc gained 3.1 percent to $51.49 before the bell after reporting higher fourth-quarter profit that beat Wall Street estimates, as growth in its cable networks offset declines in its film, TV entertainment and publishing units.

(Editing by Bernadette Baum)

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IHT Rendezvous: IHT Quick Read: Feb. 5

NEWS Gen. Moisés García Ochoa was blocked from becoming defense minister of Mexico after American officials expressed their concern that he had ties to drug traffickers. Ginger Thompson reports from New York, Randal C. Archibold from Mexico City, and Eric Schmitt from Washington.

On Monday, confirming what many historians and archaeologists had suspected, a team of experts at the University of Leicester concluded on the basis of DNA and other evidence that the skeletal remains were those of King Richard III, for centuries the most reviled of English monarchs. John F. Burns reports from Leicester, England.

In a major victory for feminists and the rule of law, a Beijing court has granted a woman a divorce on grounds of abuse and made history by issuing a three-month protection order against her ex-husband — a first in the nation’s capital, Beijing, according to lawyers and the Chinese media. Didi Kirsten Tatlow reports from Beijing.

The Thai government faces the quandary of what to do with all the creatures it has saved — a sort of Noah’s ark of endangered species. Thomas Fuller reports from Khao Pratubchang, Thailand.

A strike by garbage collectors in Seville, Spain, is entering its second week and threatening to turn into a health and safety issue in one of Spain’s most touristic cities. Raphael Minder reports from Seville, Spain.

Days ahead of a summit meeting where leaders of the European Union’s 27 member states are to wrestle again with a proposed seven-year budget, a spokesman for the bloc’s executive body was forced to defend the salaries of some officials. James Kanter reports from Brussels.

It was only a few years ago that some economists were arguing that Europe was “decoupling” from its long dependence on trade with the United States, but German carmakers proved otherwise. Jack Ewing reports.

FASHION This month Natalie Massenet, the founder of Net-a-Porter and Internet guru to the fashion world, will throw her might behind London Fashion Week. Suzy Menkes reports from London.

ARTS Song Dong gathered multitudes in Hong Kong and asked them to help complete his autobiographical “36 Calendars” project. Joyce Lau reports from Hong Kong.

SPORTS A 19-month investigation found that criminal groups had infiltrated European and international soccer with hundreds of people involved in match-fixing, global law enforcement officials said. Sam Borden reports.

It would be naïve to believe that soccer is beyond corrupting, or to doubt that the allegations by police investigators in the Netherlands on Monday are anything but the smallest ripples on an enormous global pond. Rob Hughes reports from London.

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Little House on the Prairie's Mary Ingalls Did Not Have Scarlet Fever, Researchers Say

By Maggie Coughlan

02/05/2013 at 09:45 AM EST

Little House on the Prairie

Think you know everything about Laura Ingalls Wilder's Little House on the Prairie series?

Think again.

Readers of the beloved series will remember how Wilder's older sister Mary went blind as a result of scarlet fever. But a new study published in Pediatrics, the Official Journal of the American Academy of Pediatrics, has revealed the cause of Mary's blindness was actually meningoencephalitis – a disease similar to meningitis.

Over the course of 10 years, Dr. Beth Tarini and a team of researchers studied papers and letters written by Wilder, newspaper articles about Mary's illness and data on blindness and infectious disease in the late 19th century, CNN reports.

Tarini discovered that in Pioneer Girl, Wilder's unpublished memoir, there is no reference to Mary contracting scarlet fever before going blind. "She never says scarlet fever. She never says rash," Tarini told CNN.

Then Tarini unveiled what would lead her to discover a different diagnosis. In a letter Wilder wrote to her daughter, Rose, she referenced Mary suffering from "some sort of spinal sickness." The letter goes on to mention that Mary was told by specialist in Chicago that the "nerves of her eyes were paralyzed and there was no hope."

But why would Wilder write that her sister suffered from scarlet fever? Researchers think perhaps Wilder and her editors felt the illness would be more relatable to her readers.

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Bullying study: It does get better for gay teens

CHICAGO (AP) — It really does get better for gay and bisexual teens when it comes to being bullied, although young gay men have it worse than their lesbian peers, according to the first long-term scientific evidence on how the problem changes over time.

The seven-year study involved more than 4,000 teens in England who were questioned yearly through 2010, until they were 19 and 20 years old. At the start, just over half of the 187 gay, lesbian and bisexual teens said they had been bullied; by 2010 that dropped to 9 percent of gay and bisexual boys and 6 percent of lesbian and bisexual girls.

The researchers said the same results likely would be found in the United States.

In both countries, a "sea change" in cultural acceptance of gays and growing intolerance for bullying occurred during the study years, which partly explains the results, said study co-author Ian Rivers, a psychologist and professor of human development at Brunel University in London.

That includes a government mandate in England that schools work to prevent bullying, and changes in the United States permitting same-sex marriage in several states.

In 2010, syndicated columnist Dan Savage launched the "It Gets Better" video project to encourage bullied gay teens. It was prompted by widely publicized suicides of young gays, and includes videos from politicians and celebrities.

"Bullying tends to decline with age regardless of sexual orientation and gender," and the study confirms that, said co-author Joseph Robinson, a researcher and assistant professor of educational psychology at the University of Illinois in Urbana-Champaign. "In absolute terms, this would suggest that yes, it gets better."

The study appears online Monday in the journal Pediatrics.

Eliza Byard, executive director of the Gay, Lesbian & Straight Education Network, said the results mirror surveys by her anti-bullying advocacy group that show bullying is more common in U.S. middle schools than in high schools.

But the researchers said their results show the situation is more nuanced for young gay men.

In the first years of the study, gay boys and girls were almost twice as likely to be bullied as their straight peers. By the last year, bullying dropped overall and was at about the same level for lesbians and straight girls. But the difference between men got worse by ages 19 and 20, with gay young men almost four times more likely than their straight peers to be bullied.

The mixed results for young gay men may reflect the fact that masculine tendencies in girls and women are more culturally acceptable than femininity in boys and men, Robinson said.

Savage, who was not involved in the study, agreed.

"A lot of the disgust that people feel when you bring up homosexuality ... centers around gay male sexuality," Savage said. "There's more of a comfort level" around gay women, he said.

Kendall Johnson, 21, a junior theater major at the University of Illinois, said he was bullied for being gay in high school, mostly when he brought boyfriends to school dances or football games.

"One year at prom, I had a guy tell us that we were disgusting and he didn't want to see us dancing anymore," Johnson said. A football player and the president of the drama club intervened on his behalf, he recalled.

Johnson hasn't been bullied in college, but he said that's partly because he hangs out with the theater crowd and avoids the fraternity scene. Still, he agreed, that it generally gets better for gays as they mature.

"As you grow older, you become more accepting of yourself," Johnson said.

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Online:

Pediatrics: http://www.pediatrics.org

It Gets Better: http://www.itgetsbetter.org

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AP Medical Writer Lindsey Tanner can be reached at http://www.twitter.com/LindseyTanner

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