Month: June 2017

Tapwrit overtook favored Irish War Cry in the stretch to win the Belmont Stakes by two lengths on Saturday, giving trainer Todd Pletcher his third career victory in the final leg of the Triple Crown.

Ridden by Jose Ortiz, Tapwrit ran 1½ miles in 2:30.02 on his home track. Ortiz’s brother Irad won the race last year with Creator.

“The distance, I was sure he could handle it,” Ortiz said.

Tapwrit finished sixth in the Kentucky Derby and skipped the Preakness. Five of the last nine Belmont winners have followed that same path.

“We felt like with the five weeks in between, and with the way this horse had trained, that he had a legitimate chance,” said Pletcher, who is based at Belmont Park. “I think that’s always an advantage.”

Pletcher took two of the year’s three Triple Crown races, having saddled Always Dreaming to victory in the Derby.

Tapwrit paid $12.60, $6.50 and $5 at 5-1 odds. The 3-year-old gray colt was purchased for $1.2 million, making him the most expensive horse in the field.

Irish War Cry returned $4.70 and $3.90 as the 5-2 favorite, while Patch, the one-eyed horse trained by Pletcher, paid $6.50 to show.

The $1.5 million race took several hits before the starting gate opened.

It lacked Always Dreaming and Preakness winner Cloud Computing. Classic Empire, the expected favorite, dropped out Wednesday with a foot abscess.

Epicharis, the early 4-1 second choice, was scratched Saturday morning after failing a pre-race veterinary exam. The Japan-based colt had been treated for lameness in his right front hoof earlier in the week.

All that left it a wide-open race, and in the end it was Tapwrit that proved he was up to the grueling challenge.

“Tapwrit was getting a beautiful trip,” Pletcher said. “It was everything we talked about in the paddock before the race. We were hoping he had enough when it came to crunch time. It looked like Irish War Cry still had a little something left, but the last sixteenth, he dug down deep.”

Gormley finished fourth, followed by Senior Investment, Twisted Tom, Lookin At Lee, Meantime, J Boys Echo and Multiplier.

Hollywood Handsome was pulled up after jockey Florent Geroux lost his irons in the first turn and guided the horse to the outside until he could be stopped.
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Danger lurks at Dracula’s castle.

Romanian authorities have closed a 13th-century fortress connected to Vlad the Impaler after a mother bear and her cubs were found roaming in the area.

The citadel, atop a mountain in central Romania, can be reached only by climbing 1,480 steps. It was shut in late May “for the safety of visitors,” its website said Saturday.

Local prefect Emilian Dragnea says the Environment Ministry had agreed to capture the four bears and relocate them elsewhere. Authorities blame people for leaving food in the area.

The citadel was repaired by 15th-century Romanian prince Vlad the Impaler, who inspired Bram Stoker’s 1897 gothic novel “Dracula.”

Bran Castle, also associated with Dracula, is a bigger tourist attraction.

Romania is home to between 5,000 and 6,000 brown bears.

 
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Adam West, the deadpan Batman at the center of a beloved TV show known for its sly quips and high camp, has died of leukemia at age 88.

West’s role as the legendary Caped Crusader, spanning only three years, was the high point of his career. But for better or worse, he embraced the legacy.

The son of a farmer and an opera singer, raised in the northwestern U.S. state of Washington, West’s appeal was a mixture of wholesomeness and dark humor. One of his first roles was as a sidekick on a children’s show called El Kini Popo. One of his co-stars was a chimp.

His clean-cut good looks and deep voice netted him a number of “manly man” roles in film and television in the 1960s — Westerns, crime shows and science fiction. He even appeared in a comedy Western starring the Three Stooges.

But it was superhero territory where West found his fame. Playing Bruce Wayne, a rich playboy with a dark, justice-seeking alter ego, West and co-star Burt Ward imparted weekly lessons to teens and tweens about wearing seat belts, eating healthfully and doing homework — all while defending Batman’s hometown, Gotham City, from a variety of colorful villains.

The show delved wholeheartedly into comic book culture, punctuating fight scenes with music stingers and comic-book-style pop-ups: “Zap!” “Bam!” “Zowie!”

The show also mimicked Batman comics by naming objects and ideas with the prefix “bat,” to absurd effect. Show episodes ended with: “Tune in tomorrow! Same Bat-time, same Bat-channel!”

Life after Batman

After Batman ended in 1968 — leaving 120 episodes that ran in syndication for years afterward — West struggled to free himself from the iconic character. He found small roles in film and television, but never a role that brought him a comparable amount of fame as that of the bat-winged superhero.

In his later years, West did voice work and cameos on Batman-themed shows and made regular appearances at comic book conventions, where the self-mocking wit he displayed in his most famous role continued to win him friends and admirers. He made a number of cameos in sitcoms and even spoofed himself, playing a washed-up actor in one TV show and a washed-up superhero in another.

West was married three times and had six children. Announcing his death Saturday, his family said: “Our dad always saw himself as the Bright Knight, and aspired to make a positive impact on his fans’ lives. He was and will always be our hero.”
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U2 turned their first headlining appearance at a U.S. music festival into Bono-roo.

The Irish rockers performed a two-hour set Friday night at the Bonnaroo Music and Arts Festival in Manchester, Tennessee, as part of their world tour celebrating the 30th anniversary of their Grammy-winning The Joshua Tree album.

They played the full album, as well as some of their other hits, including New Year’s Day and Beautiful Day, to tens of thousands of music fans.

Toward the end of the performance, lead singer Bono asked if they had made a mistake in not coming to the festival sooner, and later added, “Thanks for naming it after me.”

The band kicked off their tour last month in Canada, which hits the United Kingdom, Europe and Central America through Oct. 19.

The band has previously played the Glastonbury Festival, but their appearance on the Bonnaroo lineup this year was a huge get for the 16-year-old music festival.

Before their set, U2 guitarist The Edge received the Les Paul Spirit Award in a presentation from the Les Paul Foundation on the festival grounds. The Edge, whose name is David Evans, called Paul an inventor and innovator who pioneered advances in electric guitars and recording.

“I owe him a great debt of gratitude not only for the contributions he made to music, but in terms of his contributions to the technology,” Evans said.

The political nature of the album, which was inspired by the band’s fascination with America, was reflected on the giant screens behind the band. The screens showed images of female activists, scenes of the American desert and poems from American writers. Often Bono would stop singing to let the chorus of voices from fans complete the song.

As he ended the performance with their hit, One, he called it “a night we will never forget.”
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Thousands of people from around the world packed Israel’s streets of Tel Aviv for the city’s annual Gay Pride march, one of many festivals for gay rights taking place this weekend.

The festival is billed as the largest event of its kind in the deeply conservative Middle East.

Israeli police estimated that more than 100,000 people participated Friday with many coming from other countries.

The annual parade featured floats and dancers with this year’s theme being “Bisexuality Visibility.”

The festival is sponsored by the city of Tel Aviv, which has promoted gay tourism in recent years, becoming one of the world’s most gay-friendly travel destinations.

While Tel Aviv is seen as liberal and welcoming of gays, Jerusalem is seen as more conservative with the population’s views varying on gay rights. A gay pride parade there in 2015 ended in tragedy when an extremist ultra-Orthodox Jew stabbed a 16-year-old girl to death.

Across the rest of the Middle East, gay and lesbian relationships are largely taboo.

Watch: From a Jail Term to Legal Marriage in US

Gay pride festivals are taking place this weekend in dozens of cities around the world, including Los Angeles, Athens, Sydney and Rome.

A large-scale “Equality March” is planned for Sunday in Washington, with organizers saying they want to combat anti-LGBT rhetoric in the country.

Many more gay pride events are scheduled around the world later in June, the month gay pride is traditionally celebrated, chosen because of New York’s 1969 Stonewall riots in Manhattan, which is regarded as a catalyst for the gay rights movement.

Next week, Shanghai, China, will host its ninth gay pride event, but without a parade that accompanies most events in other cities around the world. Organizers say they expect around 6,000 people to attend. For the 10th anniversary next year, they said, they hope to expand to other cities including Beijing.
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Every springtime in the United States, boys don tuxedos or suits and girls wear elegant gowns on one special night. For decades, the high school prom has been a major moment in the teenage experience. While movies portray the evening as a night of magic and romance, the reality can be quite different. Jesusemen Oni followed a couple of high school students to their prom for an inside look at this decades-old tradition.
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Roman Polanski won’t take his chances and return to court to resolve his sexual assault case, so his victim is going to stand up for him.

Samantha Geimer, who was 13 at the time of the crime, is going to appeal directly to a judge Friday to end the long-running case, the fugitive director’s lawyer said.

Geimer, 54, has long supported Polanski’s efforts to end the legal saga that limits his freedom, but Friday will be the first time she’s appeared in Los Angeles Superior Court on his behalf, attorney Harland Braun said.

“She’s tired of this case,” Braun said. “The judge is just playing games with him.”

The Oscar-winner has been a fugitive since he fled to France in 1978 on the eve of sentencing for having unlawful sex with a minor. Prosecutors dropped charges that he drugged, raped and sodomized the girl.

Polanski feared the judge was going to renege on a plea agreement and send him away for more time than the six weeks he served in prison during a psychiatric evaluation prior to sentencing.

Polanski, 83, is trying to get the Interpol warrant lifted so he can move freely among most of the 190 countries in the global policing network. If that happened, the California warrant would remain valid.

The hearing Friday is an effort by Braun to get the court to unseal testimony by the now-deceased prosecutor in the case, who is believed to have testified in a closed session about backroom sentencing discussions.

Braun wants to use the transcript to show Polanski has served his time so the international warrant is dropped. 

Geimer has previously said she forgives Polanski for the assault that happened at Jack Nicholson’s compound in the Hollywood Hills during a March 1977 photo shoot.

Geimer sued Polanski and reached a settlement in 1993 for $500,000 that included over $100,000 in interest payments. Her longtime lawyer Lawrence Silver did not return phone and email messages seeking comment.

The Associated Press doesn’t typically name victims of sex abuse, but Geimer went public years ago.
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The recent WannaCry computer virus infected more than 230,000 computers in more than 150 countries. It is not yet clear who was behind the ransomware attack that affected organizations, hospitals and telecom companies worldwide, but it was hardly unexpected.

Months earlier, filmmaker Alex Gibney released his documentary Zero Days, in which he warns of massive-scale cyberattacks and their devastating effect on modern life.

He documents a cyberweapon found lurking in computers around the world in 2010. 

Stuxnet

Recruiting the help of computer experts and NSA insiders, Gibney analyzes the Stuxnet computer virus that was developed in the United States in cooperation with Israel to infect and destroy Iran’s nuclear program.

Eric Chien, technical director of security response at the global cybersecurity company Symantec, told VOA the United States developed the virus as leverage against Iran, to ensure that Iran’s nuclear program remains exclusively peaceful.

“Certainly the Iran deal is connected to this story,” Chien said.

He tells VOA the Stuxnet worm and its more dangerous sister virus Nitro Zeus were designed to do a lot of harm, such as, “shutting down huge portions of the Iranian grid; and this was a subject we know, of some debate inside the government, because it would involve not just military targets but also civilian targets like hospitals.”

He says diplomacy achieved an agreement with Iran, but says an unstated aspect of that agreement is the United States had “a big stick to use” if Iran violated the treaty.

Pandora’s Box

“That’s a very interesting thing because a lot of the legality around Stuxnet is very much in doubt,” Chien said. “In point of fact, the United States and Israel attacked Iran’s critical infrastructure in peace time.”

Though the Stuxnet operation was originally successful, the film asserts, the virus was eventually discovered and fell into the wrong hands, which could enhance it and turn it against its creator.

“It became much clearer to us that this was no longer sort of evolution of some piece of malware but a revolution that became the first sort of cyber sabotage malware that could actually cause physical destruction. And it did open Pandora’s Box,” Chien said.

“That’s where we are today. Now, what we see is many likely nation states conducting attacks all over the world, we see staging, so that potentially one day if they need flip the switch they could cause some additional sabotage to occur.”

Many attacks, targets

The Symantec security expert says the number of cyberattacks has greatly increased over the years. He says Symantec is now “tracking close to maybe a hundred different attacks on a daily basis.”

Gibney says cyberwarfare is dangerous because it has no borders or rules. It can strike anywhere, anyone, at any time.

“People depend on trains, people depend on airplanes, and people depend on their electricity. This is modern life. So, what we’re saying in this film is these weapons threaten modern life as we know it,” Gibney said.

Chien says there is always a need for mitigation when viruses sabotage our computer-controlled infrastructures.

“We actually saw recently in Ukraine that their power grid was attacked through a cyber piece of malware,” he said, “and they were able to bring back the power within a few hours. And were able to do so because actually their infrastructure is frankly a little bit more behind and they had the ability to go a manual mode. And literally just flip the switch and put things back on.”

Though there doesn’t seem to be a correlation between the recent ransomware WannaCry and Stuxnet, experts such as Chien say they are both launched from remote, often undetected locations by unknown groups who are either allegiant to rogue nation states launching undercover attacks or are mercenary hackers paid by the highest bidder to conduct cyberterrorism.

Gibney says his goal in making Zero Days was to make the public aware of the extent and danger of cyberwarfare and allow us to ask questions and demand transparency from our governments.

“At the very least, we can all demand that our leaders start talking about it more openly and stop pretending that this stuff is not going on when it is, because it’s affecting all of us at a most basic level,” the filmmaker said.
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