The Slatest

Skyfall, is not only the most profitable movie in the Bond franchise but has also become the first to cross $1 billion in global ticket sales, notes the Hollywood Reporter. The 23rd installment of the franchise is now the 14th movie in history to reach the billion-dollar milestone. The movie directed by Sam Mendes is also the first movie to earn £100 million in ticket sales in Britain, reports the Telegraph.

Skyfall cost $200 million to produce and has earned $289.6 million in North America and $710.6 million internationally. That number is bound to keep on increasing considering it hasn’t even premiered in China yet. The previous highest-grossing Bond flick was Casino Royale, which took in $599 million in 2006, according to Entertainment Weekly.

As fiscal cliff negotiations appear to be going nowhere, at least it seems that Americans will avoid the so-called dairy cliff that could have led to a doubling of milk prices next month to $7 a gallon or more. Top leaders in the House and Senate agriculture committees have agreed to a one-year extension of a farm bill that expired in October. Senate Agriculture Committee Chairman Debbie Stabenow said the House could vote on it as early as Sunday night, reports the Associated Press. Three bills related to the dairy cliff were filed in the house late Saturday that together “testify most to the continued tension between the GOP’s top brass and [House Speaker John] Boehner’s old haunt: the House Agriculture Committee,” notes Politico.

Each of the three bills would in some way prevent the spike in dairy prices that would be caused by the failure to pass a new five-year farm law when the one enacted in 2008 expired. Without a new plan, all agriculture program “automatically return to rules passed in 1949,” points out Bloomberg. A new law has languished as the Senate and House have been unable to come to an agreement on food stamps and crop subsidies, reports Reuters. By extending the old law, it is likely that there will be a new round of cash-payment subsidies to already profitable growers that both sides of the aisle had agreed to eliminate. But that may be avoided if a new five-year bill is enacted before the payments actually go out in October, points out Politico.  

“It is not perfect—no compromise ever is,” House Agriculture Committee Chairman Frank Lucas said in a statement Sunday. “But it is my sincere hope that it will pass the House and Senate and be signed by the President by January 1.”

Fear of flying may soon be a thing of the past as 2012 was a great year to get on a plane. Air travel is now the safest it has been “since the dawn of jet planes,” reports the Wall Street Journal, noting that the industry is set to mark the lowest rate of fatalities in 2012 since the early 1960s. Before Saturday’s crash near Moscow that killed four people, there were a total of 22 fatal crashes across the world in 2012, a decline from the 28 seen in 2011 and far lower from the 34 fatal accidents per year that is the average over the last decade. Of the 22 crashes, only 10 were of passenger aircraft, and just three were larger jetliners built in the West. The other seven were turboprops built in the West or Russia.

Considering there was only one fatal accident per 2.5 million flights, 2012 “was almost twice as safe as 2011,” according to an expert cited by the Journal. There is still room for much improvement in the higher crash rates across developing areas, particularly Africa and Latin America, but the 470 fatalities from air accidents in 2012 is far below the average of 770 people over the decade. This year will likely mark the first time since 1991 that airline insurance claims for plane accidents will drop below $1 billion, reports Bloomberg.

Even though New Yorkers were terrified by news that a woman pushed a man in front of a train in Queens on Thursday night (a suspect was in custody Saturday) in what was the second subway fatality of its kind in a month, the truth is that it was quite a safe year to be a resident of the Big Apple. Murders in New York dropped to their lowest level in more than 40 years with 414 recorded homicides as of Friday, compared with 515 for the same period last year, and lower than the previous record low of 471 set in 2009, reports the New York Times. That is quite the contrast from the early 1990s, when the number of homicides in a year easily reached the low 2,000s. While murders decreased, thefts increased, based almost entirely in a soaring number of robberies of Apple devices, including iPhones.

While New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg celebrated the latest plunge, officials in the country’s third-largest city have been grappling with how to make sure 2013 doesn’t see a repeat of what was a very bloody year. The murder count in Chicago reached 500 last Friday, the first time it reached that number in four years, when 513 were killed in 2008, reports the Chicago Tribune. It marked a 17 percent increase in homicides from last year, in large part because of gang violence that seems to be increasingly audacious, points out the Associated Press. Still, the number of homicides this year pales in comparison to what the city saw in the early 1990s when around 900 people were killed every year.

Maine has become the latest state to extend marriage rights to same-sex couples, and gays and lesbians celebrated by tying the knot as early as possible on Saturday. A series of civil ceremonies were held shortly after midnight in what is now the only state to legalize same-sex marriage solely through popular vote, points out Reuters. Maryland and Washington also extended marriage rights in November but Maine was the only state where voters took the initiative without state legislators acting first.

Maryland is the next state that will celebrate marriages of same-sex couples when its law goes into effect on the first day of 2013. Nine states plus Washington, D.C. now have laws in the books allowing same-sex weddings, whereas 31 states have passed constitutional amendments restricting marriage to heterosexual couples.

UPDATE: Hours after the rape victim’s death was made public, Indian police said they had charged the six men accused of being her attackers with murder. That means they could get the death penalty. As expected, protesters gathered in New Delhi and other cities across the country to demand tougher action on crimes against women. But, unlike last weekend when protesters and police clashed, demonstrations were relatively peaceful, reports Reuters.

Friday, December 28: The 23-year-old Indian woman who was gang-raped and beaten on a bus two weeks ago in New Delhi died early Saturday at a Singapore hospital. Her horrific rape, which resulted in severe organ damage when her attackers inserted an iron rod into her body, shocked Indians who took to the streets demanding greater protection for women and harsher punishment for rape. The woman, who was never identified, also suffered brain damage and a lung infection as well as a heart attack while in a hospital in India, reports the Associated Press.

The death of the young medical student could lead to more protests and clashes with the police, points out Reuters. Her rape has received blanket coverage and outraged Indians who say rapists are rarely punished and most women choose not to report sex crimes because authorities are highly insensitive when dealing with victims. Highlighting the difficulties faced by the victims, the family of an 18-year-old woman in the Indian state of Punjab who committed suicide on Wednesday after she was raped last month blamed the police inaction for her death, reports the New York Times.