In some parts of the world, the race is on to find the next generation of clean fuel. In the Netherlands, a group of students called Team Fast has developed a unique secret catalyst that can produce hydrogen fuel that is cheaper and cleaner than gasoline. VOA’s Kevin Enochs.
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A team of forensics experts Thursday opened the tomb of famed Spanish surrealist Salvador Dali to take DNA samples to settle a paternity suit.
In a spectacle that most likely would have pleased the eccentric Dali, a crowd stood outside the Dali Theater-Museum in Figueras, Spain, to watch the experts file in.
The undertaker who embalmed Dali’s body when he died in 1989 told Reuters it would be easy to get a tooth or bone sample because the body would be “in relatively good condition.”
The sample will be sent to Madrid, where it will be analyzed for a match with the DNA in a saliva sample provided by Maria Pilar Abel, 61.
Abel alleges her mother and Dali had an affair in the fishing village where he lived and that it was no secret among the villagers.
The Dali estate is worth about $460 million. But Abel has said she’s not interested in money and only wants to be recognized as Dali’s daughter.
Dali is the world’s most renowned surrealist painter. His picture of melting watches, The Persistence of Memory, is an icon of surrealism.
Dali was was also known for his long, pencil-thin mustache that curled on each end. He delighted in painting mustaches on the upper lips of those he met.
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From the dragons of Westeros and the “Walking Dead” zombies to the deadly humanoid robots of “Westworld,” the golden age of television is dominating the limelight at San Diego’s annual Comic-Con.
Kicking off on Thursday, this year’s four-day Comic-Con gathering of nerd and pop culture fans will see fewer films being marketed by movie studios, which are instead focusing more narrowly on projects that tie directly into the interests of the convention’s fandom.
Meanwhile, numerous hit sci-fi television shows have garnered avid viewers and Emmy nominations, and can drum up buzz for upcoming seasons with an already engaged fan base.
Drawing more than 100,000 attendees, Comic-Con has become an increasingly important tool for Hollywood to generate interest in upcoming projects. Yet this year, only three major Hollywood film studios – Fox, Warner Bros and Disney – and newcomer Netflix will hold panels for upcoming movies, a vast difference from five years ago when movies dominated the buzz from the convention.
Warner Bros. will bring its sci-fi sequel “Blade Runner 2049,” virtual reality thriller “Ready Player One” and its DC movie franchise of superheroes, while Disney will bring its Marvel superhero franchise.
“Studios are eyeing more quality than quantity at Comic-Con,” Entertainment Weekly’s senior writer Darren Franich told Reuters.
“There are less films debuting now, but there’s high stakes for the ones that are, as studios are thinking ‘if we do well here then that can create buzz over a year,'” he added.
On Thursday, Fox hosted a panel on upcoming British spy comedy sequel “Kingsman: The Golden Circle,” with Colin Firth and Halle Berry.
“You really feel like [Comic-Con] is owned by fans,” Firth told Reuters Television. “I don’t think I’ve been in an environment where it’s more about the passion for the material.”
The fandom of Comic-Con attendees is what drove organizers in 2012 to give medieval fantasy “Game of Thrones,” zombie drama “The Walking Dead” and nerd comedy “The Big Bang Theory” a coveted spot at Comic-Con’s prestigious Hall H. The 6,500-capacity hall is usually reserved for movie studios bringing in A-list talent, and fans often sleep outside overnight to gain access.
Hall H is where Netflix’s 1980s-set supernatural mystery series “Stranger Things” will make its Comic-Con debut on Saturday, almost a year after it became a breakout hit “largely thanks to the passion of the fan base,” producer Shawn Levy told Reuters.
“Comic-Con is such a hub of fans and passionate fanhood, so it feels like an organic match to the ‘Stranger Things’ franchise,” he said.
But celebrity panels alone aren’t enough for engaging fans.
This year, Warner Bros has a virtual reality experience of its upcoming “Blade Runner 2049” sequel, HBO has installations of the futuristic theme park of “Westworld” and “Stranger Things” fans can experience the dark, evil “Upside Down” world from the show.
“It’s no small thing to get yourself to Comic-Con and spend money and time in a high-intensity environment, and we want to reward that interest level and commitment with something special,” Levy said.
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Rio de Janeiro’s port area may be one of the city’s most inviting spots since being renovated for the Olympic Games last year. But while the area is home to attractions that include two museums and an aquarium, its rich history remains unknown to most locals and tourists.
A new app seeks to educate visitors about the area’s role in Brazilian history, from colonization and the arrival of slave ships to recent cases of corruption.
Launched in late June by the nonprofit investigative journalism agency Agencia Publica, the app called “Museum of Yesterday” offers tours of the port in Portuguese and English.
But there’s a catch. Inspired by Pokemon Go, the app detects users’ geo-location and only reveals the stories once users arrive at the location where the story took place.
With over 160 points of interest, the app offers five options. The terror tour explores slavery, colonization and the country’s military dictatorship, along with other incidents like the 1993 Candelaria massacre in which eight people — many of them teenagers — were killed while sleeping on the steps of the Candelaria church. The corruption tour investigates bribery from the time of King John VI of Portugal to recent kickback schemes. The samba tour explores the roots of Rio’s traditional Carnival music. Finally, the tour of ghosts explores important historical figures that are sometimes forgotten.
“Rio’s port carries a lot of the history of Brazil,” said Gabriele Roza, a journalist at Agencia Publica who contributed to the stories in the app. “What we realized was that these stories are not present here.”
Indeed during the Rio Olympic Games, local authorities emphatically promoted the port’s new attractions such as the futuristic looking Museum of Tomorrow designed by Spanish architect Santiago Calatrava that cost $55 million, and a new boulevard decorated by internationally acclaimed street artists.
But the city neglects other historical attractions located a few blocks away such as the Valongo Wharf, an archaeological site where hundreds of thousands of slaves debarked after their harrowing journey across the Atlantic.
Francesca Declich, an Italian anthropologist visiting the Valongo Wharf on July 9, the day it was named a UNESCO World Heritage site, complained that the wharf was hard to find and that there was only basic information available on a three-paragraph-long plaque next to the pit.
The port is also connected to the present-day Car Wash corruption investigation. For example, Eduardo Cunha, who led Brazil’s impeachment effort against former President Dilma Rousseff, is now being investigated over allegations that he received $16 million in kickbacks related to the port renovation, which cost the city of Rio over $4 billion.
Rio’s former mayor Eduardo Paes is also being investigated for taking bribes in the port renovation. Despite the scandal, the revitalized area is considered one of the few positive legacies from the Rio Olympics.
The app, which has been downloaded over 2,000 times so far, tells these and other stories through text but also through illustrations, photographs, audio, videos and a map from the 1830s when most of today’s port was still ocean.
“As you start walking along the port area you can actually capture the stories from Rio’s past and put them in a vault,” explained Mariana Simoes, another journalist from Agencia Publica who was part of the team that developed the app.
“You are actually being encouraged to walk and discover the area, discover these elements of our past as you walk through them.”
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The lead singer of rock group Linkin Park, Chester Bennington, was found dead in his California home Thursday. He was 41.
According to news reports, Bennington committed suicide by hanging himself in his home. The Los Angeles County Coroner’s office is investigating.
Bandmate Mike Shinoda confirmed the news via Twitter, saying, “Shocked and heartbroken, but it’s true.” He promised an official statement from the band “as soon as we have one.”
Successful records, MTV darling
Linkin Park’s blend of rap, electronica and heavy metal had wide appeal; nearly all of the band’s records took the top spot on the charts when released. Its style, dubbed “nu-metal,” made it an MTV darling in the early 2000s.
Linkin Park released its debut album, Hybrid Theory, in 2000, and sold 10 million records. The band went on to produce a string of successful records, including this year’s One More Light, released in May.
The band had a show scheduled next week in New York with the group Blink 182.
While playing an essential part in Linkin Park’s sound, Bennington also participated in side projects Dead by Sunrise and Kings of Chaos, groups of high-profile musicians working together on short-term projects. Bennington also served as the lead singer for Stone Temple Pilots from 2013 to 2015 after the departure of vocalist Scott Weiland. In interviews, Bennington said performing with Stone Temple Pilots was the realization of a lifelong dream.
Difficult childhood
Born in Phoenix, Arizona, in 1976, Bennington had a difficult childhood. He was the son of a police officer, and he spoke openly about being the victim of physical and sexual abuse by an older friend. He also suffered bullying in his teen years. He said in interviews that he channeled frustration in his early years into poetry, art and songwriting.
In his teens, he took up drugs and alcohol, developing the addictions that haunted him for much of his life, despite periods of sobriety. He also took up music, but found little success until the late 1990s when he won a spot in the band that would become Linkin Park.
The pains of Bennington’s childhood and young adulthood played into the band’s music, connecting with fans with songs of anger, disappointment, frustration and pain. Their videos were dramatic as well, featuring elaborate sets and scenes of deep emotion, even the one released Thursday morning, Talking to Myself, a song about disconnection and sorrow.
In 2002, Bennington told Rolling Stone magazine, “There’s something inside me that pulls me down.”
Creativity, addiction
While Bennington used creativity to cope with his feelings, he also used drugs and alcohol off and on, he said, starting in his teenage years. He spoke openly about his struggles, telling reporters about his bandmates staging an intervention for him in the early years of Linkin Park’s success. Later, he performed in concerts to benefit anti-addiction causes.
The band’s One More Light, was released just days before the death of Bennington’s close friend Chris Cornell, singer for the band Soundgarden who died of apparent suicide in a Detroit hotel room May 18.
Bennington sang Leonard Cohen’s Hallelujah at Cornell’s funeral in May. His death fell on what would have been Cornell’s 53rd birthday.
Bennington was married twice and had six children.
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Sears will begin selling its appliances on Amazon.com, including smart appliances that can be synced with Amazon’s voice assistant, Alexa.
The announcement Thursday sent shares of Sears soaring almost 11 percent. The tie-up with the internet behemoth could give shares of the storied retailer one of its biggest one-day percentage gains ever.
Sears, which also owns Kmart, said that its Kenmore Smart appliances will be fully integrated with Amazon’s Alexa, allowing users to control things like air conditioners through voice commands.
“The launch of Kenmore products on Amazon.com will significantly expand the distribution and availability of the Kenmore brand in the U.S.,” Sears Chairman and CEO Edward Lampert said in a company release.
Sears bleeding money?
Sears has struggled with weak sales for years, and announced more store closings earlier this month, partly due to the emergence of Amazon.com and other internet operators. It said in March that there was “substantial doubt” it could continue as a business after years of bleeding money.
Neil Saunders, managing director of research firm GlobalData Retail, said it’s a win for Sears, putting its products where customers are shopping.
Sales at existing Sears stores, a key measure of a retailer’s health, have been in rapid retreat for years.
“Other channels and routes to market are needed,” Saunders said.
Lifeline for Sears
Many saw the agreement with Amazon.com as a lifeline for Sears, with the volume of trading company shares enormous on Thursday.
And the law of action-reaction is almost always visible when Amazon.com is in the mix.
Shares of other major retailers that sell appliances, Best Buy, Home Depot and Lowe’s, fell between 4 percent and 6 percent.
Sears will handle after-sale services
The agreement with Seattle-based Amazon goes beyond the point of sale for Sears. Also part of the deal is delivery, installation and the service work that comes with product warranties, which will be provided by Sears Home Services.
While Saunders doesn’t think the deal represents a big shift for the retail sector, he said that it does illustrate how retailers must adapt and offer goods through multiple channels if they want to thrive. He believes others are already scrambling to do so.
Shares of Sears Holdings Corp., based in Hoffman Estates, Illinois, just outside of Chicago, jumped 92 cents to close at $9.60.
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The Confederation of African Football’s executive committee has approved expanding the African Cup of Nations from 16 to 24 teams and moving the continent’s top tournament from the beginning of the year to June-July.
CAF says the changes should come into effect for the next tournament in 2019 in Cameroon.
Other radical proposals for the African Cup — that it be hosted outside of Africa and invite non-African teams to play — were ditched by the executive committee. CAF says the African Cup will be “exclusively held on African soil with African national teams.”
CAF president Ahmad Ahmad says the approved changes will now be put to CAF’s general assembly in Rabat, Morocco, on Friday to be endorsed by African soccer’s member countries.
Moving the tournament from its January-February slot to the European summer months of June and July has long been seen as necessary to ensure the continent’s top players play at the Cup of Nations.
The move will avoid it taking place at the height of the European league season, a clash which has often undermined the Cup of Nations by making African players choose between staying with their European clubs or representing their country.
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Tech entrepreneur Elon Musk on Thursday said he had received “verbal” approval to start building a high-speed underground transport system linking New York and Washington that could cut travel time between the cities to about half an hour.
Musk, the chief executive of electric car maker Tesla Inc. and rocket company SpaceX, is seeking to revolutionize transportation by sending passengers and cargo packed into pods through an intercity system of giant vacuum tubes known as the “hyperloop.”
He recently started a project, the Boring Company, to build transport tunnels for the system, which he says would be far faster than current high-speed trains and use electromagnetic propulsion.
In tweets on Thursday, Musk said he had “Just received verbal govt approval for The Boring Company to build an underground NY-Phil-Balt-DC Hyperloop. NY-DC in 29 mins.”
Amtrak’s high-speed Acela train currently takes nearly three hours to cover the distance between the two cities, assuming no delays.
Without clarifying, Musk also tweeted that a first set of tunnels would be to “alleviate greater LA [Los Angeles] urban congestion,” adding that the company would “probably” do a loop from Los Angeles to San Francisco, and another in Texas.
“City center to city center in each case, with up to a dozen or more entry/exit elevators in each city,” he wrote.
Musk acknowledged there was still a “lot of work” to do before formal approval was granted, but said he was optimistic.
Signaling that Musk’s tweets may be premature, the press secretary for New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio tweeted a reply: “This is news to City Hall.”
Last month, Musk tweeted that he had “promising conversations” about a tunnel network with Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti.
By traveling in vacuum tubes on magnetic cushions, hyperloop trains would avoid being slowed down by air pressure or the friction of wheels on rails, making them faster and cheaper to operate, supporters say. A number of startups have begun to develop the technology, despite concerns about the cost and practicality.
On its website, the Boring Company says its goal is to lower costs by a factor of 10 or more. Some tunneling projects today cost as much as $1 billion per mile, the company said.
In 2013, Musk said a hyperloop between Los Angeles and San Francisco would cost less than $6 billion and take seven to 10 years for completion.
Major infrastructure projects typically require complex approval from various levels of government and likely would cost billions of dollars.
President Donald Trump in March met with Musk, who raised the Boring Company idea then, White House officials said. Musk also talked about his plans to launch a mission to Mars.
White House National Economic Council Director Gary Cohn in April praised the idea of Musk using tunnels to speed rail transit on the densely populated East Coast of the United States and also to cut traffic congestion in Los Angeles.
In a statement, the White House said it had had “promising conversations to date” with Musk and was committed to “transformative infrastructure projects.”
The Boring Company did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
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A Chinese telecoms carrier said it had begun closing virtual private networks (VPNs) and other tools that can bypass the so-called Great Firewall, which state
authorities use to filter and block traffic between Chinese and overseas servers.
A spokesman for Guangzhou Huoyun Information Technology Ltd, which operates in around 20 cities across China, told Reuters the company received a directive from authorities to start blocking services from midday on Tuesday.
Enlisting telecom firms will extend China’s control of its cyberspace – which it believes should mimic real-world border controls and be subject to the same laws as sovereign states.
While the Great Firewall blocks access to overseas sites, much like a border control, the telecoms firms can filter and censor online access at a more granular level, in the home and on smartphones.
“The telcos have methods at their disposal that the Great Firewall may not,” said Philip Molter, Chief Technology Officer at Golden Frog, which operates VyprVPN, a popular VPN in China.
“Because these routers deal with far less traffic, they can block more aggressively using more resource intensive methods.”
The telecoms firms have taken up their new filtering roles under a law introduced in January, and set to come into full effect next March. Experts say this could lead to increasingly targeted attacks on VPNs, one of the few tools Chinese can use to access overseas internet services.
A member of China-based anti-censorship site GreatFire.org, who goes by the pseudonym of Charlie Smith, said the authorities were shifting the responsibility to the telecoms firms.
“This is a major step towards closing whatever windows are still left open,” he said.
New attacks
The latest moves come after dozens of popular China-based VPNs have been shut down in recent weeks, and there have been rolling attacks on overseas VPNs.
This week, users also reported partial blocks and delays in the encrypted messaging app WhatsApp, the latest western social media tool to be hit. And researchers found that messages related to Liu Xiaobo, a dissident and Nobel laureate who died
from cancer in custody last week, disappeared from local messaging apps.
VPN services say they are bracing for further blocks in the run-up to this autumn’s Communist Party Congress.
President Xi Jinping, who has overseen a marked sharpening of China’s cyberspace controls, including tough new data surveillance and censorship rules, is expected to consolidate his hold on power at the Congress, which takes place every five years.
The January regulations make telecoms providers and other internet service providers (ISPs) liable for filtering and blocking unlawful network tools, according to the Ministry of Information Industry and Technology (MIIT).
Beyond VPNs, experts say the telecoms firms could potentially bar a range of services, and even prevent mobile apps from being installed.
“Much of the usage we see from China is via mobile devices, so limitations on this kind of functionality would hit a large number of Chinese,” said Golden Frog’s Molter.
Yet, despite the ambitious plans, the authorities will likely struggle to put up the blanket safeguards necessary to cripple foreign VPNs by March, experts say.
“There’s been an ongoing game of cat-and-mouse with China and VPNs … we’re optimistic that VPNs will continue to be accessible from China for the foreseeable future,” said a spokesman for ExpressVPN, noting its user numbers continue to grow in China.
Small businesses
While VPNs with foreign servers, including VyprVPN and ExpressVPN, play cat-and-mouse with regulators, quickly patching blocks and developing workarounds, small business owners say they have been hard hit by the rapid loss of local VPNs.
“Our small logistics business has just imploded”, said one business owner on the Weibo microblogging site, adding she could no longer access foreign sites despite trying several new VPNs.
Large numbers of free or low-cost VPN services flourished in Chinese app stores in the 18 months or so prior to the recent blocks.
“The ministry says we must apply for a license … and we have to buy Chinese services,” one person operating a small online media site told Reuters, asking not to be named. “If the website touches on social and political news, we have to hand over the platform account passwords. Of course, if we still had a VPN this wouldn’t be the case.”
The MIIT did not respond to a request for comment. It said last week that the new measures were not intended to harm business interests, and has previously said it would allow businesses to operate VPNs licensed by the government.
“These newest measures are one more hurdle for Chinese users to jump, in what is turning out to be an extremely long steeplechase,” said GreatFire.org’s Smith.
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China unveiled a national artificial intelligence (AI) development plan on Thursday, laying out its ambitions to build world-leading technology amid heightened international friction over applications of AI in military technology.
The value of the country’s core AI industries will exceed 150 billion yuan ($22.15 billion) by 2020 and 400 billion yuan ($59.07 billion) by 2025, the State Council said in a notice on Thursday.
“The situation with China on national security and international competition is complex… we must take initiative to firmly grasp this new stage of development for artificial intelligence and create a new competitive edge,” it said.
The plan comes as the United States is poised to bolster its scrutiny of investments, including artificial intelligence, over fears that countries including China could access technology of strategic military importance.
It follows a similar national AI development plan released by the U.S. in October last year.
The report says China aims to catch up to global leaders by rectifying existing issues including a lack of high-end computer chips and equipment, software and trained personnel.
It outlines strategic plans to strengthen links between private firms, research bodies and military bodies to promote mutual development in AI.
It also says it will increase the role of government in guiding development of AI with policy support and market regulation as well as developing AI safety assessments and control capabilities.
China has already begun investing heavily in artificial intelligence technology, including a mix of private and state-backed initiatives.
Several top Chinese firms have established research bases in the U.S., including Baidu Inc. and Tencent Holdings Ltd.
This year AI was named as a strategic technology by Chinese Premier Li Keqiang in an annual report that lays out the most important leadership priorities.
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Former football star and convicted felon O.J. Simpson will command the world’s attention once again Thursday when he pleads for his freedom on live TV.
Simpson was convicted in 2008 of an armed robbery involving two sports memorabilia dealers in a Las Vegas hotel room. The 70-year-old will ask four parole board members to release him in October after serving the minimum nine years of a 33-year sentence.
An aging Simpson will appear as inmate No. 1027820, dressed in blue jeans and a blue button-down shirt, in a stark hearing room in a remote Nevada prison.
Lovelock Correctional Center Warden Renee Baker said Wednesday she couldn’t say how Simpson’s parole hearing might turn out.
“We’ll see tomorrow,” she said.
Simpson was convicted of enlisting some men he barely knew, including two who had guns, to retrieve from two sports collectibles sellers some items that Simpson said were stolen from him a decade earlier.
“My crime was trying to retrieve for my family my own property,” Simpson told the parole officials in 2013 before apologizing.
“Make no mistake, I would give it all back,” he said, “to get these last five years back.”
The robbery was a new low for Simpson, whose celebrity spanned sports, movies, television and advertising before his fall from grace during his highly-publicized murder trial in 1995.
Simpson was found not guilty in the killings of his ex-wife, Nicole Brown Simpson, and her friend Ronald Goldman. In 1997, he was found liable in civil court for the deaths and ordered to pay $33.5 million to survivors including his children and the Goldman family.
The Goldmans believe Simpson got away with murder in Los Angeles, and many people felt the stiff sentence handed down in Las Vegas wasn’t just about the robbery.
A Goldman family spokesman said Ron Goldman’s father and sister, Fred and Kim, won’t be part of Simpson’s parole hearing but feel apprehensive about “how this will change their lives again should Simpson be released.”
The retired district attorney who prosecuted Simpson for the heist denied Simpson’s sentence was “payback” for his acquittal in the Los Angeles slayings.
David Roger said Simpson took a gamble when he rejected an offer to avoid trial by pleading guilty to a felony that could have gotten him 2 years+ in prison.
“He thought he was invincible, and he rolled the dice,” Roger said.
However, Roger acknowledges that Simpson has a good chance to go free.
By most accounts, Simpson has a clean prison record and a good chance for release.
Simpson is expected to reiterate that he has kept a promise to stay out of trouble, coaches in the prison gym where he works and counsels other inmates.
“I guess, my age, guys come to me,” Simpson told parole officials four years ago.
The same commissioners granted him parole during his last public appearance in 2013 on some of his 12 charges, leaving him with four years to serve before reaching his minimum term.
At Simpson’s side in his bid for freedom will be lawyer Malcolm LaVergne, close friend Tom Scotto, sister Shirley Baker and daughter Arnelle Simpson.
O.J. Simpson is expected to tell the board what he would do and where he would live if he is granted parole.
Malaysia has banned Despacito on state radio and television, though it might be hard to slow the song’s record-breaking popularity.
The ban applies only to government-run radio and TV outlets, not to private stations or YouTube or the music streaming services fueling the song’s success.
Communications Minister Salleh Said Keruak said late Wednesday the song was reviewed and banned because of a public complaint that the lyrics are obscene. He urged private radio stations to censor the song themselves out of sensitivity to local culture. Salleh didn’t give further details on the complaint and couldn’t be reached Thursday.
An Islamic party Amanah has earlier denounced the song and called for it to be kept off Malaysia’s airwaves as many young children were singing the song without understanding the words.
“We respect the right to be entertained but there should be clearer guidelines so that the entertainment does not spoil people but makes them better,” party official Atriza Umar told The Star newspaper.
The Spanish-language song — its title means “slowly” — was released by Puerto Rican artists Luis Fonsi and Daddy Yankee in January. The original and a remix featuring Justin Bieber together are the most streamed track of all time with more than 4.6 billion plays across streaming platforms. The previous record was held by Bieber for his 2015 song Sorry.
When the record was announced earlier this week, Fonsi credited streaming for helping his music reach every corner of the planet.
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“Emeralds,” “Rubies” and “Diamonds” will dazzle as never before as three of the world’s top dance companies share the stage for the first time to mark the 50th anniversary of “Jewels,” the world’s first full-length plotless ballet, this week.
The work by legendary choreographer George Balanchine, in three acts honoring the French, American and Russian styles that shaped his career, has joined the repertoire of many companies worldwide since it was created in 1967.
Now, on the stage where it premiered, at New York’s Lincoln Center, the Paris Opera Ballet will dance “Emeralds,” which recalls French Romanticism, to music by Gabriel Fauré. The New York City Ballet and the Bolshoi Ballet will alternate in “Rubies,” with its jazzy Igor Stravinsky score, and “Diamonds,” which reflects Imperial Russia with music by Tchaikovsky.
Unlike traditional full-length ballets that preceded it, “Jewels” has no narrative.
Each company is costumed by its own designer, including French couturier Christian Lacroix, to evoke the jewelry of Claude Arpels which inspired Balanchine, widely regarded as 20th century’s greatest ballet choreographer.
“I am so thrilled the Bolshoi is returning, I can hardly breathe!” enthused Andrea Becker, a self-professed “ballet nut” who bought tickets to all five performances. “It’s my chance to see the Russian and French dancers that I don’t normally get to see.”
Some balletomanes paid $1,000 to become an event sponsor in order to buy tickets before sales opened to the public in March, said one Lincoln Center box office agent.
The event is the brainchild of Nigel Redden, director of the Lincoln Center Festival.
“It’s inherent in the idea of the ballet” to feature the three companies, he said, since Balanchine trained in Russia, choreographed and danced in France and founded the New York City Ballet in 1948.
“What is amazing with dance is you don’t need to speak the language of the country,” said Aurelie Dupont, director of the Paris Opera Ballet. “You will see the language of the different national schools.”
Peter Martins, who became ballet master of New York City Ballet after Balanchine died in 1983, first danced in “Jewels” as a guest artist in 1968.
“He would have been very happy how dancers improved, pay more attention to details,” Martins said. “In my generation we were a little careless perhaps. But since his departure, we fuss, we take care of it.”
For dancers, the collaboration is a chance to compare notes.
“I’m excited to see Paris Opera dancers and the Russians, and how they interpret it because I’ve seen our company do it many, many times,” said Teresa Reichlen, a New York City Ballet principal. “So I think it’ll be a nice fresh reading or interpretation that I haven’t seen before.”
While there are no plans for a repeat, newly appointed Bolshoi Ballet head Makhar Vaziev said he would love to bring it to Russia.
“The biggest event here is Balanchine himself, because I can’t imagine who else could have united together these three famous, renowned companies,” he said.
“This is a relatively young ballet – 50 years is nothing,” Martins said. “The fact that it lasted this long, and that so many companies around the world are dancing this ballet is a testament to its greatness.”
The performances will run from Thursday to Sunday.
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An underwater robot entered a badly damaged reactor at Japan’s crippled Fukushima nuclear plant Wednesday, capturing images of the impact of its meltdown, including key structures that were torn and knocked out of place.
Plant operator Tokyo Electric Power Co. said the robot, nicknamed “the Little Sunfish,” successfully completed the day’s work inside the primary containment vessel of the Unit 3 reactor at Fukushima, which was destroyed by a massive March 2011 earthquake and tsunami.
TEPCO spokesman Takahiro Kimoto praised the work, saying the robot captured views of the underwater damage that had not been previously seen. However, the images contained no obvious sign of the melted nuclear fuel that researchers hope to locate, he said.
The robot was left inside the reactor near a structure called the pedestal, and is expected to go deeper inside for a fuller investigation Friday in hopes of finding the melted fuel.
“The damage to the structures was caused by the melted fuel or its heat,” Kimoto told a late-night news conference held nine hours after the probe ended its exploration earlier in the day.
‘The Little Sunfish’
The robot, about the size of a loaf of bread, is equipped with lights, maneuvers with five propellers and collects data with two cameras and a dosimeter. It is controlled remotely by a group of four operators.
The robot was co-developed by Toshiba Corp., the electronics and energy company charged with helping clean up the plant, and the International Research Institute for Nuclear Decommissioning, a government-funded consortium.
It was on a mission to study the damage and find the fuel that experts say has melted, breached the core and mostly fallen to the bottom of the primary containment chamber, where it has been submerged by highly radioactive water as deep as 6 meters (20 feet).
The robot discovered that a grate platform that is supposed to be below the reactor core was missing and apparently was knocked down by melted fuel and other materials that fell from above, and that parts of a safety system called a control rod drive were also missing.
Robots key to mothballing plant
Remote-controlled robots are key to the decadeslong decommissioning of the damaged plant, but super-high levels of radiation and structural damage have hampered earlier probes at two other reactors at the plant.
Japanese officials say they want to determine preliminary methods for removing the melted nuclear fuel this summer and start work in 2021.
Scientists need to know the fuel’s exact location and understand the structural damage in each of the three wrecked reactors to work out the safest and most efficient ways to remove the fuel.
Two earlier robots failed
Robots tested earlier became stuck inside the two other reactors. A scorpion-shaped robot’s crawling function failed and it was left inside the plant’s Unit 2 containment vessel. A snake-shaped robot designed to clear debris for the scorpion probe was removed after two hours when its cameras failed because of radiation levels five times higher than anticipated.
The robot used Wednesday was designed to tolerate radiation of up to 200 sieverts, a level that can kill humans instantly.
Kimoto said the robot showed that the Unit 3 reactor chamber was “clearly more severely damaged” than Unit 2, which was explored by the scorpion probe.
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The stranglehold that autumn prestige films have on Oscar season just might be wilting in the summer sun.
Christopher Nolan’s World War II epic Dunkirk hits theaters Friday, but the overflowing reviews have made it abundantly clear: It’s a major Oscar contender and a best-picture front-runner, even in July.
And Dunkirk, which analysts expect to debut this weekend with $60 million-plus in domestic ticket sales, might not be the only box-office hit to crash this year’s awards season. The zeitgeist-grabbing sensations Get Out and Wonder Woman could also be players come Academy Awards time.
Handicapping the Oscars
It is, of course, exceptionally early to handicap the Oscars. And it’s far from uncommon for early breakouts to recede once the fall film festivals start firing out heavily anticipated releases from Hollywood’s most acclaimed directors. Steven Spielberg, Paul Thomas Anderson and Alexander Payne are just some of those waiting in the wings this year.
But any influx from the rest of the calendar year would be a welcome change of pace for an awards season that has in recent years only further solidified as a predominantly September-December affair. Last year, August’s Hell or High Water was the earliest best-picture nominee.
Aside from spreading out what are potentially some of the year’s best movies, any awards love for the likes of Dunkirk, Get Out or Wonder Woman would give the Oscars something it has often lacked in recent years: major release crowd-pleasers.
“It’s not really a factor for us, the awards thing,” says Emma Thomas, producer of Dunkirk. “This film we primarily thought of as an entertainment. For us, we make films for audiences. My feeling is always: If your film works and people engage with it, anything that comes later is a huge bonus.”
Summer movie spectacle
Dunkirk may bear the look and seriousness of an Oscar season film, right down to the wool coats. But shot in 70mm IMAX, it also has much of the visceral spectacle of a summer movie. Thomas and Nolan have also previously had success July. It’s when they released Inception (which earned eight Oscar nods and won four awards) and The Dark Knight. The Oscar oversight of the latter, released in 2008, was seen as a major motivation for the expansion of the best-picture category the next year from five nominees to up to 10.
“We’ve had very good luck in July in the past and we like this date. It’s an accessible movie,” said Thomas. “When you put movies at the end of the year, you’re sort of saying something about it. You’re almost limiting it, in a way, and we don’t want to limit the film.”
The Oscars haven’t been without crowd-pleasers. La La Land made more than $440 million globally. Hidden Figures charmed North American audiences to $230 million. The year before, the May-released Mad Max: Fury Road crashed the Academy Awards with 10 nominations and six wins.
Dunkirk may be a similar force in craft categories. Its ensemble nature may leave less room for acting attention, though recent Oscar-winner Mark Rylance is a standout. More notably, Nolan seems likely to finally land his, some would say overdue, first directing nomination. He has already earned the praise of fellow filmmakers like Rian Johnson (who called the film “an all timer”) and Jon Favreau (“believe the hype”).
Other candidates
Other summer movies might also shake up the Oscars. The acclaimed romantic comedy The Big Sick has the backing of Amazon, which last year similarly acquired Manchester by the Sea at Sundance and made it an Oscar heavyweight. The War for the Planet of the Apes even has some buzz, including pleas for considering Andy Serkis’ motion-capture performance as the ape Caesar. Such an honor, while unlikely, would be a game-changer in an increasingly digitized movie world.
Jordan Peele’s horror sensation Get Out ($252 million worldwide after opening in late February) could well be the first horror film nominated for best picture since 1991’s The Silence of the Lambs” At the least, Peele should be a likely nominee for best screenplay.
Patty Jenkins’ Wonder Woman has been an even bigger box-office dynamo and earned nearly as good reviews as Get Out. Whereas Peele’s film was received as landmark film for its fusion of genre with a satirical critique of race in America, Wonder Woman set a new record for top-grossing film by a female director. Jenkins and star Gal Gadot could well be in the hunt. The unlikely awards run last season of Deadpool suggested voters may be open to awarding a superhero film.
Female directors
A campaign for Jenkins, who helmed the Oscar-winning Monster, would be closely watched because only four women have ever been nominated for best director. Kathryn Bigelow, the sole winner of the four, also has a film upcoming: her ambitious Detroit riots drama Detroit, out Aug. 4.
Usually, a highly relevant, socially conscious film from one of Hollywood’s most celebrated filmmakers would be plunged right into awards season. But the calculus was different for Detroit, which was deliberately timed to the 50th anniversary of the riots. And she, like many others, doesn’t love the increased emphasis on Oscar season.
“It’s not why we make these films,” Bigelow said.
“The motivation behind the release has to do with the 50-year anniversary,” she said. “I think it’s important to honor that and the resiliency of the city of Detroit. Whatever happens along any other lines, I have no idea.”
Bigelow knows from experience. Her The Hurt Locker was a June release but went on to best Avatar at the Oscars. “To say that it was even a remote thought would be in inaccurate,” she said, laughing.
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Amazon.com has launched a social feature called Spark that allows members to showcase and purchase products on its platforms, the retail giant’s first clear move into the world of social media.
Spark, which is currently only available for Amazon’s premium paying Prime members, encourages users to share photos and videos, just like popular social media platforms Instagram and Pinterest. The new feature publicly launched on Tuesday for use on mobile devices that use Apple’s iOS operating system.
Spark users can tag products on their posts that are available on Amazon and anyone browsing the feeds can instantly find and purchase them on the platform. Users can also respond to posts with “smiles,” equivalent to Facebook’s “likes.”
“We created Spark to allow customers to discover – and shop – stories and ideas from a community that likes what they like,” said an Amazon spokeswoman.
“When customers first visit Spark, they select at least five interests they’d like to follow and we’ll create a feed of relevant content contributed by others. Customers shop their feed by tapping on product links or photos with the shopping bag icon.”
Amazon has also invited publishers including paid influencers and bloggers to post on Spark. Their posts are identified with a sponsored hashtag.
Many Amazon users on social media called the service a cross between Instagram and Pinterest with a touch of e-commerce.
Brand strategist Jill Richardson (@jillfran8) said: “Been messing with #AmazonSpark all morning and I am LIVING. It’s like Pinterest, Instagram, and my credit card had a baby and it’s beautiful.”
Community manager Lucas Miller (@lucasmiller3) also tweeted: “So #amazonspark is going to be a dangerous pastime.
The app is already too easy to shop…” Amazon shares closed up 0.2 percent at $1,026.87 on Wednesday.
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Catchy summer dance song Despacito has set a record as the most streamed music track of all time, with 4.6 billion plays across leading platforms, record company Universal Music said Wednesday.
The song, first released in January in Spanish by Puerto Rican singer Luis Fonsi and rapper Daddy Yankee and then in a remixed version featuring Justin Bieber, has topped charts in 35 countries around the world and dominated radio play.
Its 4.6 billion streams surpassed the record set by Bieber with his 2015 single Sorry and its remixes, and made it the most successful Spanish-language pop song of all time.
“Streaming has opened up the possibility of a song with a different beat, from a different culture and in a different language to become a juggernaut of success around the world,” Universal Music Group Chief Executive Lucian Grainge said in a statement.
Despacito (Slowly) has spent 10 consecutive weeks on the U.S. Billboard Hot 100 chart, 17 weeks at No. 1 in Spain and nine weeks in the top spot in Britain, Universal Music said.
Fonsi, previously little known outside Puerto Rico, said it was “truly an honor that Despacito is now the most streamed song in history.”
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U.N. human rights experts called on the government of Mexico on Wednesday to “cease the surveillance immediately” of activists and journalists and to conduct a fully impartial investigation into the illegal spying.
In the latest case, an international probe into the 2014 disappearance of 43 students in Mexico was targeted with spying software sold to governments to fight criminals and terrorists, according to a report published last week.
Civilians in Mexico have been targeted by the software known as Pegasus, which Israeli company NSO Group only sells to governments, according to the report by Citizen Lab, a group of researchers based at the University of Toronto’s Munk School of Global Affairs.
“We urge the Government to commit to cease the surveillance immediately,” the independent U.N. experts said in a joint statement demanding effective controls over the security and intelligence services.
“The allegations of surveillance, which represent a serious violation of the rights to privacy, freedom of opinion and expression, and freedom of association, are highly concerning and are evidence of the hostile and threatening environment that human rights defenders, social activists and journalists face in Mexico today,” they said.
Mexican President Enrique Pena Nieto has asked the attorney general’s office to investigate previous charges that the government spied on private citizens, saying he wanted to get to the bottom of the accusations that he called “false.”
“We are concerned about the alleged implication in the purchase and use of Pegasus of the same authorities that are now in charge of conducting the investigations”, the U.N. experts said. “In that sense, we call on the Government to take all the necessary steps to ensure the impartiality of the investigating organ.”
Citizen Lab said it had found a trace of the Pegasus software in a phone belonging to a group of experts backed by the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights who investigated the 2014 disappearance of the students that marked one of Mexico’s worst atrocities.
The U.N. experts include those on human rights defenders, enforced disappearances, freedom of opinion, and the right to privacy.
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An impending auction of pop star Madonna’s personal items, including a love letter from her ex-boyfriend the late rapper Tupac Shakur, a pair of previously worn panties and a hairbrush containing her hair, was halted by a judge on Tuesday.
Manhattan state Supreme Court Judge Gerald Leibovitz ordered Gotta Have It! Collectibles to pull 22 items from its rock-and-roll-themed auction scheduled for Wednesday.
The Material Girl had earlier sought an emergency court order saying she was “shocked to learn” of the planned online auction of the Tupac letter and had no idea it was no longer in her possession.
“The fact that I have attained celebrity status as a result of success in my career does not obviate my right to maintain my privacy, including with regard to highly personal items,” Madonna said in court papers. “I understand that my DNA could be extracted from a piece of my hair. It is outrageous and grossly offensive that my DNA could be auctioned for sale to the general public.”
Court papers said the Tupac letter was expected to fetch up to $400,000. Tupac, one of the best-selling rappers of all time, dated Madonna in the early 1990s and died of injuries suffered in a Las Vegas drive-by shooting in 1996.
Madonna, behind such hit songs as “Like a Virgin” and “Vogue,” has sold hundreds of millions of albums. Other Madonna items scheduled to be auctioned were private photographs taken at a bachelorette party at her Miami home, personal letters and cassette tapes of unreleased recordings.
Madonna’s court papers name Darlene Lutz, a former friend, art consultant and “frequent overnight guest” in Madonna’s home when she was “not in residence,” as behind the sale of the property.
A spokesman for Lutz and the auction house said the allegations will be “vigorously challenged and refuted” in court.
“Madonna and her legal army have taken what we believe to be completely baseless and meritless action to temporarily halt the sale of Ms. Lutz’s legal property,” spokesman Pete Siegel told the New York Post. “We are confident that the Madonna memorabilia will be back.”
Two new books from the Harry Potter universe are set to be released as part of a British exhibition that celebrates the 20th anniversary of the launch of the series.
The British Library’s Harry Potter exhibition, “A History of Magic,” opens in October and runs through February 2018. In an earnings statement released Tuesday, British publishing house Bloomsbury revealed that two new Potter books will be released in conjunction with the event.
“Harry Potter: A History of Magic – The Book of the Exhibition” promises to take readers through subjects studied at Potter’s wizarding school, Hogwarts. “Harry Potter – A Journey Through A History of Magic” will touch on mystical things such as alchemy, unicorns and ancient witchcraft.
Both books will be published in October.
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