Los Angeles Ready to Shine for IOC Evaluation Visit

It will be lights, camera, action with the Los Angeles 2024 Olympic bid in the spotlight when the International Olympic Committee visits Tinseltown this week as the race to host the Summer Games heats up.

The IOC’s Evaluation Commission will hear a well-worn sales pitch during a three-day visit that will provide a firsthand glimpse at the LA2024 vision.

What commission chief Patrick Baumann of Switzerland and his members discover will find its way into a report presented to IOC members who will decide between Los Angeles and Paris as 2024 host when a vote is held in Peru on Sept. 13.

While there will be no shortage of celebrity firepower and Hollywood pizzazz, starting with a visit to “Jimmy Kimmel Live” on Tuesday and a Los Angeles Dodgers game on Wednesday, LA2024 officials will be out to impress but at the same time emphasize that this is no Olympic blockbuster, like those that have been ravaged by critics for their cost and white elephants.

In fact, the bid is more frugal than flashy with officials touting a proposal that will lean heavily on existing sporting venues such as the Rose Bowl, Forum and the Memorial Coliseum that was the centre piece of the 1932 Olympics and used again for the 1984 Summer Games.

The LA plan calls for no new venue construction and athletes to be housed in renovated student residences on the UCLA campus not far from Beverly Hills.

Casey Wasserman, the entertainment executive heading LA2024, and everyone connected with the bid have stayed on message throughout the process – that Los Angeles can deliver a cost conscious, low-risk Games.

“The report will address a wide range of relevant issues and technical matters, including the sustainability and legacy value of the proposal, its impact on the natural environment, and the experience for athletes, the media, spectators and other Games participants,” Baumann said in a letter to the media.

“It will offer a consensus opinion on the opportunities and strengths of the two candidatures, but will not endorse one over another.”

The report will be made available on July 5.

Los Angeles rescued the Olympics in 1984 by taking over a Games no one wanted and transforming them into the world’s biggest sporting extravaganza pouring billions into IOC coffers.

Cities, however, are no longer lining up to host an Olympics, the astronomical price tag of staging a two-week sporting festival now too extravagant for most tastes but Los Angeles could be in position to revitalise the franchise once again with a fiscal responsible bid.

Paris and LA are the only remaining cities left in the race to secure the 2024 Games, after a number of withdrawals from the process, including Boston, Hamburg, Rome and Budapest.

“We don’t think this campaign is only about the 2024 Games, we believe we have the responsibility to put forward a plan that will serve the Olympic movement long after the 2024 Games are over,” said Wasserman. “LA 2024 is about the future.”

your ad here

Romanian Museum Celebrates Creativity of Kitsch

Visitors to Romania who yearn for a taste of communist-era kitsch now have an entire museum to enjoy.

From the mundane (wedding champagne flutes covered in sequins and bows) to the spectacular (a life-sized Dracula and flashing neon crucifixes), Bucharest’s Kitsch Museum celebrates questionable taste of the past and present.

“My favorite kitsch, which has unfortunately been damaged, is a statue of Christ with an incorporated room thermometer,” said Cristian Lica, who opened the museum to show off a collection he has amassed over two decades. “The creativity behind kitsch must be admired.”

The 215 exhibits are curated into several categories: communist, Dracula, Orthodox Church, contemporary and Gypsy kitsch, which, Lica said, was not meant to offend the Roma minority.

“We don’t want to insult anyone. We didn’t invent anything. We just picked up items from the reality around us,” he said.

Lica, who has traveled to over 100 countries and has written a travel book, said he thought Romania has been particularly prone to kitsch as it rushed to catch up with the aspirational living standards of its richer Western neighbors.

In the communism collection, plain cotton underwear hangs out to dry, a common sight on apartment balconies of the era. For Romanians, the tiny museum in the capital’s picturesque old town, is full of recognizable artifacts both from pre-1989 communist times and the present.

“It reminded me of my childhood, how I grew up, how the house looked,” said local visitor Simona Constantin. “I am glad such a museum has opened. Everything I have seen has made me nostalgic.”

your ad here

Latin Singer Prince Royce Gears Up for Summer Tour

Latin pop star Prince Royce will tour 21 U.S. cities this summer to showcase his new music, which he says has a bit of a new twist.

Known for his Dominican bachata hits, Royce released his fifth studio album, “FIVE,” in February, collaborating with musicians Chris Brown, Zendaya and Shakira. Bachata is a style of romantic music originating in the Dominican Republic.

“I think it’s important to always try new things,” Royce, 27, told Reuters on Tuesday. “On this album, we got Chris Brown singing bachata, he did a little bit of Spanish, Zendaya also singing in Spanish,” he said.

Royce said it was “a pleasure to work with” Shakira, adding that he shares a lot in common with the “Hips Don’t Lie” singer.

“She’s very involved with every detail,” said Royce. “I identify with her a lot because that’s the way I am. I like to listen to a song 1,000 times.”

Since launching his career in 2009, Royce, who was born in the New York City borough of The Bronx, has garnered 15 No. 1 hits on Latin radio charts, 21 Latin Billboard Awards and 9 Latin Grammy nominations.

Although he is proud of his accomplishments, Royce said he chooses to live in the present.

“I think it’s always good to focus on today,” Royce said. “I think that’s what always keeps that hunger, keeps that motivation.”

He will kick off his summer tour on June 29 in Laredo, Texas and end it on July 30 in Miami.

your ad here

AeroVironment Unveils Palm-sized Surveillance Drone for US Military

Drone-maker AeroVironment Inc. unveiled a small four-rotor surveillance helicopter on Tuesday that can be carried in a small pouch and launched from the palm of a hand.

The smaller size and simplicity of operation means it can used by ordinary soldiers, offering squads and other small military units the kind of surveillance capacity previously reserved for larger military units, where drones are operated by specialists.

AeroVironment said it delivered 20 of the 5-ounce (140-gram) Snipe unmanned aircraft to its first U.S. government client in April. The company declined to identify the government agency that purchased the drones, but Aviation Week reported last year that AeroVironment was developing prototypes for the U.S. Army.

Designed to worn as part of uniform

AeroVironment said the drone benefited from advances in technology achieved in the development of its Nano Hummingbird drone for DARPA, the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, which has been responsible for many technological and scientific breakthroughs used by the military.

Kirk Flittie, AeroVironment’s vice president in charge of unmanned aircraft systems, said in a statement the Snipe copter drone is “designed to be worn by its operator so it can be deployed in less than a minute.”

Battery life is 15 minutes

The aircraft, which is intended for intelligence and reconnaissance missions, can relay high-resolution images and record video both day and night. It can fly at speeds of 20 mph (35 kph), has a range of more than a kilometer (half-mile), and can fly for about 15 minutes on batteries, the statement said.

AeroVironment’s hand-launched Raven unmanned aircraft, which weighs 4.2 pounds (2 kg) and has a wingspan of 4.5 feet (1.4 meters), is one of the most widely used military surveillance drones, with more than 19,000 built.

Shares of AeroVironment dropped 0.2 percent to $29.13 within its 52-week range of $22.16 to $32.44.

your ad here

Stirring Portraits of Communist Albania’s Women Recall Different Reality

Three women stare down from the gallery wall — colorful, defiant and imbued with a spirit of working for the many not the few.

They are a brigadier, a factory worker and a youth volunteer with a hoe. They are paintings of socialist realism. They are also all Albanian women from the time of Enver Hoxha, who created one of the world’s most closed societies until his death in 1985.

Visitors to Greece’s capital have a relatively rare opportunity to see Hoxha-era art on display outside its regular home in Tirana’s National Gallery of Art.

The portraits are part of documenta 14, the Kassel, Germany-based exhibition of Western European modern art that this year is being hosted both in Kassel and Athens.

Hundreds of documenta 14 displays are to be found in museums across the Greek city until July, with the three women portraits among the offerings at EMST, the National Museum of Contemporary Art located in the old but renovated Fix brewery building.

The paintings — by Spiro Kristo (1976), Zef Shoshi (1969) and Hasan Nallbani (1968) — draw you in and can inspire.

But they were also political, more than acceptable to Hoxha, who saw threats from the West, Russia, the then-Yugolavia and just about everywhere.

In a sense, they are modernist icons for the only society in the world that was officially atheist.

As Edi Muka, an Albanian art critic and curator, notes of Shoshi’s factory worker, “representations of motherhood as constitutive of women’s central role in religious art are carefully removed.”

Hoxha-era paranoia was to be found everywhere from spikes in vineyards to deter potential enemy paratroopers to more than 700,000 concrete bunkers across the country, housing soldiers on guard for potential attack.

So it was not all easy for painters. Not far from the three women, documenta 14 has hung a 1971 painting “Planting of Trees” by Edi Hila.

It depicts blissfully happy young people planting trees for their country.

Too blissfully happy, perhaps. Almost “expressive dancing,” in the words of the painter.

“My work stepped out of the contours of socialist realism,” Hila told Reuters in Tirana. “Generally in those works the positive, the hero, is in the center. … The compositional structure was different so this hurt their taste.”

Hila, deemed to be in need of re-education, ended up being sentenced to work as a loader on a chicken farm. His drawings from that time — showing a different kind of realism — are also on display in Athens.

your ad here

As Droughts Worsen, Phones and Radios Lead Way to Water for Niger’s Herders

When Moumouni Abdoulaye and his fellow herders in western Niger used to set off on scouting missions in search of water, they feared for their livestock – and for their own lives.

Unable to rely anymore on their traditional methods of predicting the weather amid increasingly erratic droughts and floods, and lacking modern climate information, they struggled to predict where, and when, they might find water in the vast arid region.

“We were living in limbo. Without knowledge, we constantly risked our lives,” said Abdoulaye, seeking shade under a tree from the fierce midday sun in Niger’s Tillabery region.

But a project to involve the region’s semi-nomadic people in the production of locally-specific, real-time weather forecasts – and provide them with radios and mobile phones to receive and share the information – is transforming the lives of tens of thousands of Nigeriens like Abdoulaye.

“Now we receive daily updates about rainfall, can call other communities to ask if they have had rain, and plan our movements accordingly,” Abdoulaye told the Thomson Reuters Foundation.

In Niger, as across much of Africa’s Sahel region, frequent droughts have impoverished many people and made it much harder to make a living from agriculture. That is happening in a West African country already consistently ranked at the bottom of the U.N. Human Development Index.

With climate change now exacerbating pressures, experts say there is a growing and urgent need for better climate information, to ensure farmers and pastoralists are equipped to cope with unpredictable rainfall and climate shocks.

Across Africa, only limited climate data is collected and made available, and information services are often not well understood, user-friendly, or followed up to help people put the information to use in adapting to climate threats, experts say.

Ensuring that communities play a role – alongside state and aid agencies – in generating and sharing weather information is the best way to get them to use it and to build their resilience to the growing pressures, said Blane Harvey of the Overseas Development Institute (ODI).

“Co-participation is very powerful because people will buy into a service if they’ve had a hand in producing it,” he said.

“Crucially, they bring in their local knowledge, which helps to downscale and triangulate more regionalized forecasts,” added Harvey, a research associate at the London-based think tank.

Collaboration crucial

A lack of weather stations across Africa means that forecasts, produced by national meteorological agencies, tend to be too broad to be of much use at a local level.

But a project launched in 2015, funded by the U.K. Department for International Development (DFID) and led by CARE International, is trying to improve the quality of and access to climate data for farmers and pastoralists in western Niger.

CARE’s project under the Building Resilience and Adaptation to Climate Extremes and Disasters (BRACED) program aims to help 450,000 people become better prepared for climate shocks, including through giving them access to better forecasts.

The goal is to help them diversify their farming and find ways of making money which are not so heavily impacted by climate change, in order to better withstand climate pressures.

For farmer Adamou Soumana, improved access to climate information has given his village a better understanding of the weather shocks they are encountering, and the confidence to adopt resilience boosting strategies such as using climate-adapted seeds, finding sustainable ways to harvest forest products, and storing harvests.

“Previously, if it rained in January, we rushed to plant our crops thinking the rainy season starts – when in fact it never comes before May,” he said.

“Now we understand climate shocks, and can plan our activities in advance. We feel more resilient,” he said.

The BRACED project has helped communities by acting as a broker between them and meteorological agencies, and ensuring agency partners are trained to interpret climate data, translate it into local languages and help people to make sense of the forecasts.

The project also connects local people who collect rainfall data, as well as other farming and pastoralist leaders, with community radio stations to share real-time information daily.

Incorporating traditional observations – such as when trees bloom or the way birds behave – and having regular discussions with communities is key to building and maintaining trust in climate information services, said Richard Ewbank of Christian Aid, another charity working on climate resilience issues.

“Having experts and community leaders together and combining local knowledge with scientific forecasts is the best way to agree on a climate scenario, and make key decisions for the coming season,” said the global climate advisor for the charity.

Life or death decisions

In addition to improving the quality of climate information and making it more relevant on a community-by-community basis, the BRACED project in Niger has provided mobile phones and radios to boost the spread of the forecasts.

“Receiving and sharing the information in this way not only helps pastoralists know when and where to move, it also builds relationships and trust between people,” said Amadou Adamou of the Association for the Revitalization of Livestock Breeding.

Good information can not only help pastoralists find water sources but also help them know when to sell their animals, especially if drought is on the way, according to Adamou.

The mobile phones and radios used are powered by solar cells, enabling pastoralists to get forecasts while on the move. They also are given to both male and female community chiefs to ensure women have equal access to the information.

While better climate data has improved resilience for many in Tillabery region, in both settled and nomadic communities, there is still much room for improvement, several experts said.

Residents want to see more meteorological advisers based locally who can help them have regular discussions about the forecasts.

They also want more help to convert the data into action on the ground such as diversifying the crops they grow and better planning the timing and direction of their migration routes in search of water. They also want the information service expanded to cover neighboring countries.

“Getting better forecasts is one thing. But having good, solid advice about what the information means, and discussions on how to use it to become more resilient, is what people in the region really want,” said Harouna Hama Hama of CARE.

For roaming communities like Abdoulaye’s – people who cross into neighboring Benin, Burkina Faso and Togo with their livestock – expanding the climate data effort to produce region-wide forecasts could mean the difference between life and death for many of their members, Abdoulaye said.

“Whenever some of our people head to these countries, they and the animals risk dying of thirst,” he said. “With better forecasts, and for the whole region, we could lose fewer lives.”

your ad here

Amazon Gives Voice-enabled Speaker a Screen, Video Calling

Amazon is giving its voice-enabled Echo speaker a touch screen and video-calling capabilities as it competes with Google’s efforts at bringing “smarts” to the home.

 

The new device, called Echo Show, goes on sale on June 28 for $230.

 

The market for voice-assisted speakers is small but growing. Research firm eMarketer expects usage of the speakers to more than double, with nearly 36 million Americans using such a device at least once a month by year’s end.

 

Amazon’s Echo is expected to continue its dominance, with a share of nearly 71 percent, though eMarketer expects Google’s Home speaker to cut into that share in the coming years.

 

Amazon says it’s also bringing calling and messaging features to its existing Echo and Echo Dot devices and the Alexa app for phones.

your ad here

FCC Website Under Attack

The website for the Federal Communications Commission has come under attack.

Initially, the problems were believed to have been caused by comedian John Oliver, who on Sunday urged his viewers to leave comments on the site about the FCC’s plans to revisit net neutrality rules.

Net neutrality rules were implemented in 2015 and required internet service providers to treat all traffic equally. New FCC chairman Ajit Pai has said he will review the rules, arguing they are “holding back investment, innovation and job creation.”

The FCC, which “regulates interstate and international communications by radio, television, wire, satellite, and cable,” says the website attacks were coordinated, distributed denial of service attacks, not a surge in traffic.

“These actors were not attempting to file comments themselves, rather they made it difficult for legitimate commenters to access and file with the FCC,” chief information officer David Bray said. “While the comment system remained up and running the entire time, these distributed denial of service events tied up the servers and prevented them from responding to people attempting to submit comments.”

On his show, “Last Week Tonight,” Oliver said, “Every internet group needs to come together … gamers, YouTube celebrities, Instagram models, Tom from MySpace if you’re still alive. We need all of you,” he said.

The FCC will vote on net neutrality rules on May 18.

your ad here

Back on TV, Kimmel Zings Critics of his Health Care Plea

Jimmy Kimmel zinged his critics as he returned to late-night TV and resumed arguing that Americans deserve the level of health care given his infant son.

Back on ABC’s “Jimmy Kimmel Live” Monday after a week’s absence, he said baby Billy is recovering well from open-heart surgery for a birth defect and thanked well-wishers. Then he charged back into the fraught topic.

“I made an emotional speech that was seen by millions, and as a result of my powerful words on that night, Republicans in Congress had second thoughts about repeal and replace” of the Affordable Care Act, he joked. “I saved health insurance in the United States of America!”

“What’s that? I didn’t save it? They voted against it anyway?” Kimmel said. The House approved the American Health Care Act last week.

He dismissed those who labeled him an elitist — as a youngster, his family bought powered milk because they couldn’t afford fresh, he said — and pretended to repent for his previous comments.

“I’d like to apologize for saying that children in America should have health care. It was insensitive, it was offensive, and I hope you can find it in your heart to forgive me,” Kimmel said.

He took on former Rep. Newt Gingrich, saying his claim that all children would receive the same surgery as Kimmel’s son in an emergency fell short of addressing what follows.

“That’s terrific if your baby’s health problems are all solved during that one visit. The only problem is that never, ever happens. We’ve had a dozen doctor’s appointments since our son had surgery,” Kimmel said.

Kimmel brought on a current GOP lawmaker, U.S. Sen. Bill Cassidy of Louisiana, a physician, who had suggested that the Senate’s upcoming health care legislation should have a “Jimmy Kimmel test” of covering pre-existing conditions but in a fiscally conservative way.

During a satellite interview with Cassidy, Kimmel asked about his position on issues including uninsured workers and protection of children under a revised health care bill.

The senator called on viewers to contact their representatives and urge support of final legislation that fulfills President Donald Trump’s promise to lower premiums combined with coverage that passes the Kimmel standard.

Kimmel called for his namesake test to guarantee that no family be denied medical care, emergency or otherwise, because they can’t afford it.

“You’re on the right track,” Cassidy said, but the country has to be able to pay for it.

“Don’t give a huge tax cut to millionaires like me,” Kimmel replied.

On last Monday’s show, the host detailed how Billy’s routine birth April 21 suddenly turned frightening when he was diagnosed with a hole in the wall separating the right and left sides of the heart and a blocked pulmonary valve, a condition known as tetralogy of Fallot with pulmonary atresia. He successfully underwent surgery, but will face more as he grows.

Using his son as an example, Kimmel called for health care for all and for pre-existing conditions to remain covered as provided by the Affordable Care Act passed under President Barack Obama.

“If your baby is going to die and it doesn’t have to, it shouldn’t matter how much money you make. … Whether you’re a Republican or a Democrat or something else, we all agree on that, right?” he said.

The video of Kimmel’s tearful monologue went viral, drawing praised by some, including Obama, and harsh criticism from others.

your ad here

ESA Looking For Life on Mars

Exploration of Mars has not proceeded without setbacks, but that did not discourage scientists trying to find the answer to one of the crucial questions – has the red planet ever sustained life? If the answer is positive, it would mean that we are not alone in the universe. Scientists at the European Space Agency ESA have already moved on from last year’s crash of their lander, preparing its orbiting parent spacecraft to start looking for life-related gases. VOA’s George Putic reports.

your ad here

Austrian Court Rules Facebook Must Delete ‘Hate Postings’

Facebook must remove postings deemed as hate speech, an Austrian court has ruled, in a legal victory for campaigners who want to force social media companies to combat online “trolling.”

The case — brought by Austria’s Green party over insults to its leader — has international ramifications as the court ruled the postings must be deleted across the platform and not just in Austria, a point that had been left open in an initial ruling.

The case comes as legislators around Europe are considering ways of forcing Facebook, Google, Twitter and others to rapidly remove hate speech or incitement to violence.

Germany’s cabinet approved a plan last month to fine social networks up to 50 million euros ($55 million) if they fail to remove such postings quickly and the European Union is considering new EU-wide rules.

Facebook and its lawyers in Vienna declined to comment on the ruling, which was distributed by the Greens and confirmed by a court spokesman.

 

 

Court asks about automation

Strengthening the earlier ruling, the Viennese appeals court ruled on Friday that Facebook must remove the postings against Greens leader Eva Glawischnig as well as any verbatim repostings, and said merely blocking them in Austria without deleting them for users abroad was not sufficient.

The court added it was easy for Facebook to automate this process. It said, however, that Facebook could not be expected to trawl through content to find posts that are similar, rather than identical, to ones already identified as hate speech.

The Greens hope to get the ruling strengthened further at Austria’s highest court. They want the court to demand Facebook remove similar — not only identical — postings, and to make it identify holders of fake accounts.

Greens to seek damages

The Greens also want Facebook to pay damages, which would make it easier for individuals in similar cases to take the financial risk of taking legal action.

“Facebook must put up with the accusation that it is the world’s biggest platform for hate and that it is doing nothing against this,” said Green parliamentarian Dieter Brosz.

Chief Executive Mark Zuckerberg has said hate speech has no place on the platform and the company has published a policy paper on how it wants to work against false news.

 

your ad here

Pioneer Vietnam War Journalist Morrissy Merick Dies at 83

Anne Morrissy Merick, who successfully fought for equal treatment of female reporters during the Vietnam War, has died. She was 83.

Morrissy Merick died May 2 of complications from dementia in Naples, Florida, said her daughter Katherine Anne Engleke.

ABC had assigned Morrissy Merick to cover the war in 1967 when U.S. commander Gen. William Westmoreland ordered that female reporters could not spend the night in the field with the troops. That made it impossible for the female reporters to go on most combat missions, as there would be no way for them to return to the base at night.

She and Overseas Weekly editor Ann Bryan Mariano organized the half-dozen female reporters covering the war to challenge Westmoreland’s order. They appealed to the Defense Department, which overrode Westmoreland.

“An edict like Westmoreland’s would prohibit women from covering the war. It was a knockout blow to our careers. We had to fight,” wrote Morrissy Merick in the book she co-authored in 2002 with eight colleagues, War Torn: Stories of War from the Women Reporters Who Covered Vietnam. Associated Press writer Edith M. Lederer was one of the co-authors.

Morrissy Merick gained national attention in 1954 when she became the first female sports editor of Cornell University’s student newspaper. “This sports writing doll breached the last bastion of masculinity left standing this side of the shower room,” famed sports columnist Red Smith wrote.

After graduation, she became sports editor of the international edition of the New York Herald Tribune.

ABC hired her in 1961 as an associate producer, where she covered the civil rights movement and the space program. She worked for nine months for ABC in Vietnam. While there, she met her husband, U.S. News and World Report reporter Wendell “Bud” Merick. She stayed with him in Vietnam until 1973, when the magazine closed its bureau. He died in 1988.

She married Dr. Don R. Janicek and lived with him in Naples until his death in 2016. She is survived by her daughter, a sister and four granddaughters.

your ad here

A Look at Disney World’s New Pandora-World of Avatar Land

It’s not a movie set, but visitors to Disney World’s new Pandora-World of Avatar land are in for a cinematic experience.

The 12-acre land, inspired by the “Avatar” movie, opens in Florida in late May at Walt Disney World’s Animal Kingdom. It cost a half-billion dollars to build.

 

The marquee attraction is Flight of Passage, where a 3-D simulator plunges riders into a cinematic world. You feel like you’re riding on the back of a banshee, a bluish, gigantic, winged predator that resembles something out of the Jurassic era. Wearing 3-D glasses and straddling what resembles a stationary motorcycle, you’re strapped in, then the lights go out, a screen in front lights up and you’re swooped into a world of blue, gigantic aliens called Na’vi, with moon-filled skies, plunging waterfalls, jumping marine animals and towering ocean waves.

 

The ride provides an enchanting and intoxicating five minutes that touches all the senses. Blasts of air and spritzes of mist hit your face, and as you fly through a lush forest, a woodsy aroma wafts through your nostrils. A visitor could go on the ride 20 times and not catch half the visual details.

 

Disney designers are quick to say the new land is the star of the action, not the backdrop. “The character is being portrayed and played by the place itself and that’s different than a set,” said Joe Rohde, the design and production leader of Pandora — World of Avatar.

Flight of Passage is ride’s highlight

Other aspects of Pandora can’t quite compete with the excitement and immersion of Flight of Passage. Much of Pandora, at least during the daytime, is hard to distinguish from the rest of Animal Kingdom, Disney’s almost 20-year-old zoological-themed park with lush landscaping, an emphasis on conservation and a Noah’s ark range of animals.

 

At night, though, Pandora transforms into a sea of color with glowing lights on artificial plants and even in the pavement.

 

The enormous blue Na’vi aliens from the “Avatar” movie appear sparingly, really just on Flight of Passage and a second attraction called Na’vi River Journey. Before going on Flight of Passage, visitors walk through a tunnel in a faux mountain until they stumble upon a laboratory that includes a Na’vi floating in a tank.

 

“It’s not as simple as a guy in a costume painted blue walking around out here,” Rohde said of the aliens. “We know they are culturally present around us but we will meet them when we go on an excursion.”

Indoor river ride

The other main attraction, Na’vi River Journey, is an indoor river ride in the dark, lit up by glowing creatures and plants. The ride culminates with a Na’vi animatronic woman beating on drums as a chorus of voices reaches a crescendo. Images of the Na’vi riding horse-like creatures appear behind lush foliage, glimpsed in the distance from the river.

 

Disney has been building attractions themed on movies since Disneyland opened in 1955 with rides inspired by Snow White, Peter Pan and Alice in Wonderland. Often, as with Pandora, the attractions open years after the movies debut. “Avatar” came out in 2009. Director James Cameron’s sequel isn’t due out until 2020. Lands based on “Star Wars” are scheduled to open in Disney parks in California and Florida in 2019.

 

Pandora-World of Avatar isn’t tied to a narrative from the film but rather tells a story set in the future, after humans degraded the jungle through industrial folly and a resurgence of nature overtakes the human-built environment. That theme is a recurring architectural motif, for example with a beverage stand and cantina made to look like they were built for industry by humans but then overrun by plant life.

A mix of real and artificial plants

 

Throughout Pandora, real plants intermingle with artificial plants that resemble alien pods or Dale Chihuly glass sculptures. It’s difficult to distinguish what is real.

 

“We were trying to get as close as possible to fool the eye,” said Zsolt Hormay, a Disney creative executive.

 

At the entrance, visitors hear a cacophony of bird chirps and animal cries. A circle of drums connected to faux tree roots allows visitors to drum and then get a response of drumming or pulsing lights.

 

The focal points are a 135-foot (41-meter) mountaintop where Flight of Passage is located as well as “floating mountains” that appear to be suspended in air but are actually made of concrete. Engineers use tricks to make the park appear bigger than it is. The artificial foliage gets smaller as it goes higher on the mountain to give it the illusion of distance.

 

 

New way to order food

Disney also is testing out a new way to order food at Pandora. Before going to the park, visitors can pull up a menu on the My Disney Experience mobile app, order lunch and go about visiting the park. When it’s time to eat hours later, they can go to the canteen, tap on an app a button that notifies the cooks they are present. Several minutes later their food will be ready in a special line.

 

Jon Landau, the executive producer of the original movie, says he hopes Pandora does for visitors what the film did for movie-goers.

 

“I hope when people come to Pandora and their eyes will be open and they will look at the world a little differently when they go back across the bridge,” Landau said.

 

your ad here

Bill Clinton and James Patterson Co-Writing a Thriller

Neither Bill Clinton nor James Patterson has ever tried something like this before.

 

The former president and the best-selling novelist are collaborating on a thriller, “The President is Missing,” to come out June 2018 as an unusual joint release from rival publishers — Alfred A. Knopf and Little, Brown and Co. In a statement Monday provided to The Associated Press, the publishers called the book “a unique amalgam of intrigue, suspense and behind-the-scenes global drama from the highest corridors of power. It will be informed by details that only a president can know.”

Knopf has long been Clinton’s publisher, and Patterson has been with Little, Brown for decades. “The President is Missing” is the first work of fiction by Clinton, whose best-known book is the million-selling “My Life.” For Patterson, it’s the chance to team up with a friend who knows as well as anyone about life in the White House.

 

“Working with President Clinton has been the highlight of my career, and having access to his firsthand experience has uniquely informed the writing of this novel,” Patterson said in a statement. “I’m a storyteller, and President Clinton’s insight has allowed us to tell a really interesting one. It’s a rare combination — readers will be drawn to the suspense, of course, but they’ll also be given an inside look into what it’s like to be president.”

 

“Working on a book about a sitting president — drawing on what I know about the job, life in the White House and the way Washington works — has been a lot of fun,” Clinton said in a statement. “And working with Jim has been terrific. I’ve been a fan of his for a very long time.”

 

A political release from the 1990s had a similar arrangement: Random House and Simon & Schuster jointly published the nonfiction “All’s Fair” by husband-and-wife campaign consultants James Carville and Mary Matalin.

 

Knopf and Little, Brown declined to offer any more details about the book, including whether it refers to President Donald Trump, who last fall defeated Clinton’s wife, Hillary Clinton. Financial terms for the novel, which the authors began working on late in 2016, were not disclosed. Clinton and Patterson share the same literary representative, Washington attorney Robert Barnett, who negotiated the deal. “The President is Missing” will be co-written, co-published and co-edited — Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group chairman Sonny Mehta is working on the manuscript with CEO Michael Pietsch of Hachette Book Group, the parent company of Little, Brown.

 

“This is a blockbuster collaboration between two best-selling authors,” Mehta and Pietsch said in a joint statement, “and the pages we’ve read to date are riveting, full of intricate plotting and detail. This is a book that promises to entertain and delight millions of readers around the world, and we are thrilled to be working on it together and with our esteemed houses supporting us.”

 

Presidents and ex-presidents have been turning out books for a long time, but novels are rare. Jimmy Carter, a prolific and wide-ranging author since leaving the White House in 1981, released the historical novel “The Hornet’s Nest” in 2003. A presidential daughter, Margaret Truman, had a successful career with her “Capital Crime” mystery series.

 

Clinton’s other books include “Giving” and “Back to Work.” Patterson and various co-authors complete several works a year, ranging from young adult novels to the Alex Cross crime series.

 

Penguin Random House — which has published both Clinton and Patterson — has U.K., Commonwealth and European rights to the collaboration.

 

“This unprecedented collaboration with its compelling mix of insider knowledge and edge-of-the-seat suspense is utterly irresistible,” said Susan Sandon, divisional managing director at Penguin Random House in a statement.

 

your ad here

Meet the Iranian Who Looks Like Lionel Messi

An Iranian student who happens to look uncannily like soccer great Lionel Messi, nearly ended up in jail for disrupting public order.

A photo event in Reza Paratesh’s home town of Hamedan attracted so many fans that police had to close it down, according to AFP.

Paratesh’s brush with fame came after his father convinced him to pose for a photo wearing Messi’s number 10 Barcelona jersey and send it to a sports website.

That worked out well as Paratesh became a popular television guest and even got a modeling job.

“Now people really see me as the Iranian Messi and want me to mimic everything he does. When I show up somewhere, people are really shocked,” he said. “I’m really happy that seeing me makes them happy and this happiness gives me a lot of energy.”

Paratesh is not a professional soccer player, but he’s reportedly working on some dribbling tricks to make his impersonation more realistic.

He said he’d like to meet Messi face to face someday.

“Being the best player in footballing history, he definitely has more work than he can handle. I could be his representative when he is too busy,” he said.

your ad here

Facebook Removes Accounts in Fight Against Fake News

Facebook says it has deleted tens of thousands of accounts in Britain ahead of the June 8 general election in a drive to battle fake news.

 

The tech giant also took out newspaper advertisements in Britain’s media offering advice on how to spot such stories. The ads suggest that readers should be “skeptical of headlines,” and “look closely at the URL.”

The company says it has made improvements to help it detect fake news accounts more effectively.

 

Simon Milner, the tech firm’s U.K. director of policy, says the platform wants to get to the “root of the problem” and is working with outside organizations to fact check and analyze content around the election.

 

Milner says Facebook is “doing everything we can to tackle the problem of false news.”

your ad here

Controversial Cartoon Frog Croaks

Pepe, the green, cartoon frog who some believed was a symbol of white supremacy, is dead.

The creation of cartoonist Matt Furie, Pepe was shown in a recent comic strip dead in an open casket with his imaginary friends gathered around to mourn his death.

Pepe first appeared online around 2005, and was associated with the phrase “feels good man.” The character was the subject of countless memes, most of which were innocuous and apolitical.

During the brutal 2016 U.S. presidential campaign, many Donald Trump supporters used images of Pepe for political memes.

One prominent example of a Pepe meme was posted by Donald Trump Jr. It had a photoshopped version of the movie poster for “The Expendables” showing instead Donald Trump, Rudy Giuliani, alt-right icon Milo Yiannopoulos and Pepe the Frog branded as “The Deplorables,” in reference to Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton’s claim that many Trump supporters were deplorable.

In response to that and other memes which showed the frog with a Hitler moustache and another in which the frog donned the white robes of the Ku Klux Klan, the Anti-Defamation League declared the green frog a hate symbol, saying it had been appropriated to express racist views on the internet.

“The mere fact of posting a Pepe meme does not mean that someone is racist or white supremacist,” the ADL said. “However, if the meme itself is racist or anti-Semitic in nature, or if it appears in a context containing bigoted or offensive language or symbols, then it may have been used for hateful purposes.”

At the time, Furie attempted to launch a “save Pepe” campaign, telling Time magazine “It’s completely insane that Pepe has been labeled a symbol of hate […] but in the end, Pepe is whatever you say he is, and I, the creator, say that Pepe is love.”

your ad here

MTV Awards Salute ‘Beauty and the Beast,’ ‘Stranger Things’

Film hit Beauty and the Beast and Netflix newcomer Stranger Things were the night’s big winners with two trophies apiece as MTV partied with its Movie & TV Awards show.

For this, the 26th edition of what was formerly known as the MTV Movie Awards, TV was added to the mix. Stranger Things was decreed the Show of the Year, and its cast member, Millie Bobby Brown, was named Best Actor in a Show.

Beauty and the Beast was the Movie of the Year, with its star, Emma Watson, the Best Actor in a Movie.

But the awards had another trick up its sleeve, introducing a policy of breaking down gender barriers, as men and women competed jointly in the acting categories.

The policy was put into practice at the top of the show by presenter Asia Kate Dillion, who proudly noted she has been able to break down gender barriers as “the first openly non-binary actor to play an openly non-binary actor on a major TV show,” Showtime’s drama series Billions. (A non-binary person is someone who doesn’t identify with either gender.) Then she presented the award to Watson.

“Acting is about the ability to put yourself in someone else’s shoes, and that doesn’t need to be separated into two different categories,” Watson said in receiving her trophy,

Despite glowering skies and dime-size hailstones, MTV was heralding the start of the summer viewing season with its annual shindig. The red carpet outside Los Angeles’ Shrine Auditorium became a swamp as luminaries made their water-logged arrival for the shindig. But inside, it was dry (except for flowing cocktails among audience members) as Adam Devine hosted the proceedings.

Tongue-in-cheek, Devine described himself as a progressive personality fully equal to the night’s high-minded theme.

As the caption “Adam Gets It” flashed on the screen, Devine declared, “I love Hugh Jackman. But I call him Hugh Jack-PERSON.”

And turning to Beauty and the Beast, he said, “I call it `Multidimensional woman with her own dynamic traits, and the beast.’ ”

The show maintained its traditional irreverence with awards recognizing the best duo (Jackman and Dafne Keen of the film Logan), best villain (Jeffrey Dean Morgan, The Walking Dead), best tearjerker (hit TV drama This Is Us), and best kiss (Ashton Sanders and Jharrel Jerone of Moonlight).

That last award was presented by co-stars of the film smash Get Out: a very blond Allison Williams in shimmering miniskirt, alongside a nervous-looking Lil Rey Howery.

“Are you scared of me?” Williams asked him.

“I’m AFRAID — that’s the word I’m going to use,” Howery said.

“Ever since the movie came out,” said Williams, “for the last couple of months …

 ” … Black dudes don’t mess with you,” said Howery, whose character in the film has good reason to be scared of hers.

A new award, Best Fight Against the System, went to the film Hidden Figures, which tells the story of a team of African-American women mathematicians who served a vital role at NASA during the space program’s early years.

The mission of the filmmakers, said one of its stars, Taraji P. Henson, was to dispel a certain deep-seated social myth “so another young girl wouldn’t grow up thinking that her mind wasn’t capable of grasping math and science.”

The cast of the Fast and Furious franchise received the Generation Award, accepted by Vin Diesel, who thanked a generation of fans “willing to accept this multicultural franchise, where it didn’t matter what color your skin was or what country you are from — when you’re family, you’re family.”

Trevor Noah of Comedy Central’s The Daily Show was named Best Host.

“There is one person I aspire to be every single day,” he said, “and that is my mom: a powerful, strong black woman who never listened when people told her she couldn’t be more.”

Then, among his thanks, he voiced gratitude to President Donald Trump “for the comedy.”

Even one of the night’s biggest awards couldn’t escape a bit of mischief-making. Presenting Movie of the Year, Amy Schumer and Goldie Hawn comically bobbled the title (a la the Oscars), first announcing La La Light, then Moonland. Then they got it right: Beauty and the Beast.

your ad here

China to Strengthen Its Controls Over the Internet

China will further tighten its internet regulations with a pledge Sunday to strengthen controls over search engines and online news portals, the latest step in President Xi Jinping’s push to maintain strict Communist Party control over content.

Xi has made China’s “cyber sovereignty” a top priority in his sweeping campaign to bolster security. He has also reasserted the ruling Communist Party’s role in limiting and guiding online discussion.

The five-year cultural development and reform plan released by the party and State Council, or Cabinet, calls for a perfecting of laws and rules related to the internet.

Qualifications for online reporters

That includes a qualification system for people working in online news, according to the plan, carried by the official Xinhua news agency.

“Strike hard against online rumors, harmful information, fake news, news extortion, fake media and fake reporters,” it said, without giving details.

Xi has been explicit that media must follow the party line, uphold the correct guidance on public opinion and promote “positive propaganda.”

The plan comes on top of existing tight internet controls, which includes the blocking of popular foreign websites such as Google and Facebook.

Security threat cited

The government last week issued tighter rules for online news portals and network providers. Regulators say such controls are necessary in the face of growing security threats, and are done in accordance with the law.

Speaking more broadly about the country’s cultural sector, the plan calls for efforts to reinforce and improve “positive propaganda.” The plan also calls for more effort to be put into promoting China’s point of view and cultural soft power globally, though without giving details. 

 

your ad here

Metal Fabric Printed as One Piece

3D printing with metals is rapidly changing the way parts are being manufactured because it is now possible to create continuous complex shapes. Where once parts had to be welded to close the gaps, they can now be made as one solid piece. NASA’s scientists say they can now print flexible material made of intertwined metal rings. VOA’s George Putic reports.

your ad here