Month: December 2017

Shame Mingles With Self-congratulation in Oscar Season

By Uponent | | No Comments | Entertainment

In nearly every major Academy Awards category this year there’s some trace of the sexual misconduct allegations that have swept through the movie industry.

 

Best supporting actor? That’s where Kevin Spacey was once considered a contender. Now he’s been scrubbed from Ridley Scott’s “All the Money in the World,” his performance replaced with one by Christopher Plummer.

Best animated feature? The favorite is “Coco,” the latest from Pixar, the animation studio co-founded by John Lassater. He’s currently on a “sabbatical” following his admission of inappropriate behavior.

 

Best director? With only four women ever nominated, no category better illustrates the industry’s ingrained gender equality issues — the same systematic imbalance that made it easier for Harvey Weinstein and others to act with such impunity for so long.

 

And even best actress, a category where you might expect a moment’s reprieve, is — if tradition holds — to be presented by last year’s best-actor winner, Casey Affleck. He settled two sexual harassment allegations filed against him in 2010.

Weinstein, who for so long craved omnipresence on Oscar night, may finally get his wish. Even though the former Weinstein Co. co-chairman has been kicked out of the Academy of Motion Pictures Arts and Sciences and his company’s name has been erased from its best Oscar shot this year (Taylor Sheridan’s “Wind River,”) Weinstein will be ubiquitous in absentia.

 

The ongoing sexual harassment scandals have colored every phase of awards season, but whether they will ultimately shape who wins is another question. The season is just getting into the swing of things, with a number of critics groups announcing their awards in the past week and the Golden Globe nominations coming Monday. But in this year’s Oscar race, the Weinstein effect is already playing an unpredictable role.

 

With so much disgrace to go around, is Hollywood still in the mood for self-congratulation?

 

At last week’s Gotham Awards, the usually bubbly atmosphere was somewhat subdued, or at least Nicole Kidman thought so when she accepted a lifetime achievement award and urged the crowd to loosen up. Joana Vicente, executive director of the Independent Film Project, which puts on the Gothams, was one of the few to directly address the elephant in the room.

“This has been a tough year for our industry and for the world,” said Vincente. “We would like to take a moment to recognize and to honor those women and those men who have stepped forward.”

 

But at the same time, the movies have given plenty to celebrate. From “The Florida Project” to “Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri,” this year’s awards favorites are a formidable bunch, rife with timely social commentary. Many of the most celebrated filmmakers, from Greta Gerwig to Jordan Peele, are young, giving an awards season once dominated by Weinstein what many now long for: new voices.

 

The continuing fallout has made sexual harassment a commonly discussed topic on red carpets, at press junkets and on late-night shows — places that are typically reserved for more frothy banter. Sometimes, it has made for awkward interactions like a recent episode of NPR’s “Fresh Air,” in which Gerwig was questioned by host Terry Gross about Noah Baumbach, her boyfriend, casting Hoffman. The interview, for which Gerwig was widely praised, exemplified how the conversation around sexual harassment in Hollywood can overtake the spotlight reserved for the year’s best films.

Even the most trusted staple of Oscar season — screening Q&As and panel discussions — are now potentially fraught territory. At an anniversary screening of the film “Wag the Dog” moderator John Oliver grilled Dustin Hoffman over an earlier allegation that the actor groped a 17-year-old on the set of 1985 TV film “Death of a Salesman.” Hoffman, who has denied the allegation, is a possible supporting-actor contender and Gotham Awards honoree for his performance in Baumbach’s “The Meyerowitz Stories.”

 

One veteran publicist of the season, who spoke on the condition on anonymity so as not to influence any campaigns, acknowledged that some clients have been coached to be ready to discuss sexual harassment issues. But the publicist said that the impact of the scandals on the Oscar race has been overstated.

The film most perfectly poised for the post-Weinstein moment is Martin McDonagh’s “Three Billboards,” in which Frances McDormand stars as an outraged mother out to revenge the rape and murder of her daughter. The director has even imagined a face-off between McDormand’s wrathful protagonist, Mildred Hayes, and Weinstein. “We all know who would win,” says McDonagh.

 

Yet, in the early going, two lively and precise coming-of-age tales — Luca Guadagnino’s “Call Me By Your Name” and Gerwig’s “Lady Bird” — have been cleaning up the most. Tom O’Neil, the veteran awards analyst of Gold Derby, said the early love for these “little movies with a big heart,” as he called them, has forced him to re-examine his initial prediction of glory for “Three Billboards.”

 

“Three Billboards” won the highly predictive audience award at the Toronto International Film Festival in September. And many have viewed McDormand as the overwhelming best-actress favorite. But early wins have gone to Saoirse Ronan of “Lady Bird, “Meryl Streep of “The Post” and Sally Hawkins of “The Shape of Water.”

 

“It still may do very well. It’s going to do extremely well with the Golden Globe nominations about to come out,” said O’Neil. “But ‘Three Billboards’ may just be too negative for these Oscar voters looking for uplifting messages.”

Other films can legitimately claim the mantel of “the movie of the moment.” “Lady Bird,” Gerwig’s solo directorial debut, stands apart, as one columnist wrote, for “so genuinely reflect(ing) a woman’s experience and viewpoint.” No film captured the zeitgeist like Jordan Peele’s “Get Out,” a movie that cleverly rendered the realistic horrors of being black in America. Steven Spielberg’s upcoming Pentagon Papers drama, “The Post,” is both a celebration of a free press meant as a rebuke to President Donald Trump, and a tale of female empowerment led by Streep’s Katharine Graham. Sean Baker’s “The Florida Project” is a sunny fable that burrows inside the lives of the hidden homeless.

 

The bigger-budget wildcard, Christopher Nolan’s “Dunkirk,” has received few nominations so far, including a best picture Critics’ Choice Awards nomination on Wednesday. It could yet emerge as a heavyweight on the merits of its big-screen craft.

 

But there’s no question that the normal rhythms of Oscar season have been upset. Amazon, which last Oscars steered “Manchester by the Sea” to a best-picture nomination, is this year pushing the Kumail Nanjiani comedy “The Big Sick,” even while Amazon Studios head Roy Price resigned on the heels of sexual harassment allegations.  Angelina Jolie, whose Khmer Rouge family drama “First They Killed My Father” is Cambodia’s Oscar submission, was among the many women who spoke out about her experience with Weinstein.

 

Between now and the March 4 Academy Awards, to be hosted by Jimmy Kimmel, there may be more developments, too. Given the pace of revelations thus far, there will be.

As a platform for bringing attention to gender inequality in Hollywood, the Academy Awards is far from perfect. Despite overhauling its membership in recent years, the film academy remains 72 percent male and 87 percent white. The changes have still been enough to make some ponder if the traditional notion of an “Oscar-friendly” movie have shifted, as they seemingly did last year when “Moonlight” upset “La La Land.”

 

Ronan Farrow, who penned the New Yorker’s Weinstein exposes, was among those who in February contemplated whether #OscarsSoMale was the more fitting hashtag after several years of #OscarsSoWhite online protests. As has been noted, Oscar, himself, is male, naked and clutching only his sword. This year may be cause for, at the least, a change of attire.
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Bitcoin Worth Millions Stolen Days Before US Exchange Opens

By Uponsil | | No Comments | Silicon Valley

A bitcoin mining company in Slovenia has been hacked for the possible theft of tens of millions of dollars, just days before the virtual currency, which hit a record above $15,000 on Thursday, is due to start trading on major U.S. exchanges.

NiceHash, a company that mines bitcoins on behalf of customers, said it is investigating a security breach and will stop operating for 24 hours while it verifies how many bitcoins were taken.

Research company Coindesk said that a wallet address referred to by NiceHash users indicates that about 4,700 bitcoins had been stolen. At Thursday’s record price of about $15,000, that puts the value at over $70 million.

There was no immediate response from NiceHash to an emailed request for more details.

“The incident has been reported to the relevant authorities and law enforcement and we are cooperating with them as a matter of urgency,” it said. The statement urged users to change their online passwords.

Slovenian police are investigating the case together with authorities in other states, spokesman Bostjan Lindav said, without providing details.

 

The hack will put a spotlight on the security of bitcoin just as the trading community prepares for the currency to start trading on two established U.S. exchanges. Futures for bitcoin will start trading on the Chicago Board Options Exchange on Sunday evening and on crosstown rival CME Group’s platforms later in the month.

That has increased the sense among some investors that bitcoin is gaining in mainstream legitimacy after several countries, like China, tried to stifle the virtual currency.

 

As a result, the price of bitcoin has jumped in the past year, particularly so in recent weeks. On Thursday it surged to over $15,000, up $1,300 in less than a day, according to Coindesk. At the start of the year, one bitcoin was worth less than $1,000.

 

Bitcoin is the world’s most popular virtual currency. Such currencies are not tied to a bank or government and allow users to spend money anonymously. They are basically lines of computer code that are digitally signed each time they are traded.

 

A debate is raging on the merits of such currencies. Some say they serve merely to facilitate money laundering and illicit, anonymous payments. Others say they can be helpful methods of payment, such as in crisis situations where national currencies have collapsed.

Miners of bitcoins and other virtual currencies help keep the systems honest by having their computers keep a global running tally of transactions. That prevents cheaters from spending the same digital coin twice.

 

Online security is a vital concern for such dealings.

In Japan, following the failure of a bitcoin exchange called Mt. Gox, new laws were enacted to regulate bitcoin and other virtual currencies. Mt. Gox shut down in February 2014, saying it lost about 850,000 bitcoins, possibly to hackers.

Ali Zerdin in Ljubljana, Slovenia, and Carlo Piovano in London contributed to this story.
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Experts Scramble to Monitor Long-dormant Iceland Volcano

By Uponsci | | No Comments | Science

At the summit of one of Iceland’s most dangerous volcanoes, a 72-foot (22-meter) depression in the snow is the only visible sign of an alarming development.

 

The Oraefajokull volcano, dormant since its last eruption in 1727-1728, has seen a recent increase in seismic activity and geothermal water leakage that has worried scientists. With the snow hole on Iceland’s highest peak deepening 18 inches (45 centimeters) each day, authorities have raised the volcano’s alert safety code to yellow.

 

Experts at Iceland’s Meteorological Office have detected 160 earthquakes in the region in the past week alone as they step up their monitoring of the volcano. The earthquakes are mostly small but their sheer number is exceptionally high.

 

“Oraefajokull is one of the most dangerous volcanos in Iceland. It’s a volcano for which we need to be very careful,” said Sara Barsotti, Coordinator for Volcanic Hazards at the Icelandic Meteorological Office.

 

What worries scientists the most is the devastating potential impact of an eruption at Oraefajokull.

 

Located in southeast Iceland about 320 kilometers (200 miles) from the capital, Reykjavik, the volcano lies under the Vatnajokull glacier, the largest glacier in Europe. Its 1362 eruption was the most explosive since the island was populated, even more explosive that the eruption of Italy’s Mount Vesuvius in 79 A.D. that destroyed the city of Pompei.

 

Adding to the danger is the lack of historical data that could help scientists predict the volcano’s behavior.

 

“It’s not one of the best-known volcanos,” Barsotti said. “One of the most dangerous things is to have volcanos for which we know that there is potential for big eruptions but with not that much historical data.”

 

Iceland is home to 32 active volcanic sites, and its history is punctuated with eruptions, some of them catastrophic. The 1783 eruption of Laki spewed a toxic cloud over Europe, killing tens of thousands of people and sparking famine when crops failed. Some historians cite it as a contributing factor to the French Revolution.

 

The Eyjafjallajokull volcano erupted in April 2010, prompting aviation authorities to close much of Europe’s airspace for five days out of fear that its volcanic ash could damage jet engines. Millions of travelers were stranded by the move.

To remedy the lack of data for Oraefajokull, scientists are rushing to install new equipment on and around the volcano. Those include ultra-sensitive GPS sensors that can detect even the slightest tremors, webcams for real-time imagery of the volcano and sensors in the rivers that drain the volcano’s glaciers to measure the chemical composition of the water.

 

Associated Press journalists last week visited scientists working near the mouth of the Kvia River, where the stench of sulfur was strong and the water was murky, clear signs that geothermal water was draining from the caldera.

 

“The most plausible explanation is that new magma is on the move deep below the surface,” said Magnus Gudmundsson, professor of geophysics at the Institute of Earth Sciences in Reykjavik.

 

But what happens next is anyone’s guess. In the most benign scenario, the phenomenon could simply cease. More concerning would be the development of a subglacial lake that could lead to massive flooding. At the far end of the spectrum of consequences would be a full eruption.

 

With such high-risk developments at stake, authorities are taking precautions. Police inspector Adolf Arnason now is patrolling the road around the volcano, which will be used for any evacuation, and residents have received evacuation briefings.

 

“Some farmers have only 20 minutes (to leave),” he said, pulling up to a small farm on the flank of the mountain.

If an evacuation is ordered, everyone in the area will receive a text message and the radio will broadcast updates. Police are confident that Oraefi’s 200 residents will know how to react, but their biggest concern is contacting tourists.

 

Iceland has seen a huge boom in tourism since the 2010 eruption — a record 2.4 million people are expected to visit this year and about 2,000 tourists travel through Oraefi every day. While some stay in hotels that could alert their guests, others spend the night in camper vans spread across the remote area.

 

“The locals know what to do. They know every plan and how to react. But the tourists, they don’t,” said Police Chief superintendent Sveinn Runarsson. “That’s our worst nightmare.”
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Keillor Says MPR Wrong to Dismiss Him Without Investigation

By Uponent | | No Comments | Entertainment

Garrison Keillor says Minnesota Public Radio shouldn’t have dismissed him last week without fully investigating what the radio station has called “multiple allegations.”

Jon McTaggart, CEO of MPR’s parent company APMG, told employees Wednesday that the allegations against the 75-year-old former “A Prairie Home Companion” host covered an extended period of time. He provided no details.

 

In an email late Wednesday, Keillor told the Associated Press MPR has made an “enormous mistake … by not conducting a full and fair investigation.”

 

An MPR spokeswoman told AP last week that two people made complaints against Keillor, though only one claimed his behavior was directed at her.

 

Keillor’s attorney, Eric Nilsson, said Thursday that he knows of only one person making allegations against Keillor. Nilsson says McTaggart must “set the record straight.”
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Opioid Overdoses Take Toll on Medical Community

By Uponsci | | No Comments | Science

Within seconds of pulling out of the station parking lot, Major Mike Will gets his first call to respond to a crisis. Wills switches on his lights and siren and picks up the pace.

A thirty-year veteran of the Louisville’s emergency medical services, he has witnessed the explosion in opioid overdoses that have ravaged the city over the past two-years.

“The information we have right now is a 52-year old adult male who is unconscious, CPR in progress. And it look like an overdose,” he tells us.

The epidemic is taking a toll on Louisville’s first responders who field an average of over 20 overdose calls a day.

“When I first started, we could anticipate making narcotic or opioid overdose calls maybe five times a year,” he says. “And in the past year or two we have several of our crews that are making five in a 12 or 16 hour shift.”

As overdoses have steadily risen in cities and small towns across the country, officials have been searching for answers. Louisville reached a crisis point last August, with 151 overdoses over a span of four days.

Doctor on the front lines

Dr. Robert Couch, an emergency room physician and medical director at Louisville’s Norton Audubon Hospital, was on call at that time. He saw nine overdoses in five hours.

“We have been seeing heroin overdoses for a long time. But what was unusual about this overdose experience was it was taking larger and larger doses of the antidote Naloxone to reverse the effects of it,” he says. “So we knew that it wasn’t just heroin.”

Couch had learned of a similar spike in overdose cases in Ohio and West Virginia several weeks earlier. According to toxicology reports, those cases were caused by heroin mixed with Carfentanil, an opioid derivative often known as “the elephant tranquilizer,” that is 5,000 times more powerful than heroin.

“It is toxic in microgram quantities,” says Couch. “And so I suspected what other communities had seen was moving into Louisville at that time.”

According to the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration, Fentanyl and Carfentanil are synthetic opioids predominantly manufactured in underground laboratories in China. Often sold as research chemicals, they can be bought on the dark web.

Cheaper to produce than heroin, they are often delivered to the U.S. through the mail. Dealers then mix the synthetics with their heroin to boost profits. The results are often deadly.

“Unfortunately, users don’t know what they are getting,” says Couch. “Heroin is toxic enough as it is. These other derivatives can cause death almost immediately through respiratory depression.”

Fentanyl and its derivatives have forced emergency rooms across the country to change their protocols for overdose patients.

“A couple of years ago we would start with a very small dose, say 0.4 milligrams of Naloxone and that would be effective,” Couch tells us. “That dose has increased to about 2 milligrams and now we are using 4 milligrams of Naloxone just to restore breathing initially.”

Naloxone can suppress opioids in the body for about 30 minutes, which is long enough to treat a typical heroin overdose. The Fentanyl derivatives are so potent emergency rooms are having to re-dose patients as the Naloxone wears off.

“People can re-sedate and be right back in the throes of their overdose even though they have been administered the reversal agent,” Couch says.

Fear on the streets

As overdoses have risen, so has fear on the street among drug users.

“To find a bag of heroin is pretty rare – that is just heroin,” says Mathew LaRocco, who runs the Louisville Metro Needle Exchange out of the first floor of a city government building. The exchange provides clean needles and other supplies to 400 drug users a week.

Studies have shown that drug users who frequent needle exchanges are 5 times more likely to seek treatment and less likely to contract HIV, hepatitis, and other health problems associated with intravenous drug use.

LaRocco works closely with the drug-using community in metro Louisville and says people are legitimately scared.

“There is a lot more respect for the product that is on the street,” he says. “People are realizing just how dangerous this is.”

LaRocco says several years ago when Fentanyl first came on the scene there was a small subset of users – usually young male users – who had the attitude that it would never happen to them.

“You don’t see that anymore,” he says. “You are seeing a volatility to the drug where people who used to inject five times a day are now injecting 15 times a day. They are still using the same amount of drug throughout the day, they are just breaking it up into smaller doses because they don’t want to die.”

He says Fentanyl and its derivatives are also showing up in other street drugs like methamphetamine.

“I have a client that only shoots methamphetamine,” says LaRocco. “He doesn’t shoot anything else. He was drug-screened and there was Fentanyl in his screen.”

LaRocco says even with the fear on the streets it is still difficult for an addict to overcome their irrational cravings.

“That still doesn’t change the fact that when someone overdoses on a bag of dope, everybody want to figure out where they got that bag of dope from. Because they know it is going to get them high,” he told us.

Lucky man

Major Mike Will arrives on the scene and pulls up behind a fire truck parked in a middle-class, suburban neighborhood lined with sidewalks. Two police officers are standing in the yard of a modest house with a brick front porch. Inside, paramedics are administering Naloxone, the opioid antidote, and the patient begins to regain consciousness.

“The transport unit was right on top of the run,” says Will. “So that gives this individual a much better chance because the first responders were so close. Apparently we had a two minute response time.”

A few minutes later, a white man with graying hair walks out under his own power and lays on a gurney waiting for him in the front yard – cheating certain death. Major Wills says he’s one of the lucky ones.

“You know these people we are bringing back with Naloxone, it’s giving them a second chance,” he says. “And it is frustrating to see these folks doing it over and over again. But I mean, you know, addiction is a sickness. And these people are addicted.”
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7 Years in Prison for Former Top Volkswagen Manager  

By Uponbiz | | No Comments | Business

A federal judge in Michigan has sentenced a former high-level Volkswagen manager to seven years in prison for his part in the scheme to cheat emissions tests and defraud consumers.

Oliver Schmidt has also been fined $400,000. He pleaded guilty in August to charges that included defrauding the United States and violating the Clean Air Act.

“This sentence reflects how seriously we take environmental crime,” Acting U.S. Attorney Daniel Lemisch said Wednesday. “Protecting national resources is a priority of this office. Corporations and individuals acting on behalf of corporations will be brought to justice for harming our environment.”

Schmidt was the general manager of Volkswagen’s U.S. Environment and Engineering office. He admitted knowing about and agreeing with engineers to carry out a scheme to install a device on certain VW diesel vehicles that would switch on for emissions tests, but switch off during normal driving.

Customers bought the cars believing they were environmentally friendly when in fact the cars were polluting as much as 30 times higher than U.S. standards.

Federal courts have ordered Volkswagen to spend more than $1 billion to buy back or repair the affected cars.
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China’s Ofo Joins Crowded Paris Bike-share Market

By Uponbiz | | No Comments | Business

China’s Ofo launched its dockless bicycles in Paris on Wednesday, becoming the fourth bike-sharing plan operator in a city set to banish all combustion-engine cars by 2030.

Ofo France general manager Laurent Kennel told Reuters the firm, one of two bike-sharing giants in China, had put just over 100 of its bright yellow bicycles on Paris roads on Wednesday and plans to ramp that up to 1,000 bikes by year-end.

Ofo comes hot on the wheels of Hong Kong-owned Gobee.bike, which launched in October and whose bright green bikes, estimated at a few thousand, can be seen on every Paris street.

A third Asian player, Singapore-owned oBike, has a few hundred bikes on Paris streets, and will also compete with the city’s long-established Velib plan.

Unlike the dockless Asian bikes, the Velib bikes must be parked in fixed docking stations of which there are some 1,800 in Paris, but which are often full in popular parts of the city.

“We want to be leader in free-floating bikes in Paris and France,” Kennel said.

He added that to cover Paris well, the firm plans to put several thousand bikes on the road, although there are no immediate plans to match Velib’s 24,000 bicycles.

Like Velib, the Ofo bikes have three gears – unlike the gearless Gobee and oBike bikes – but will be slightly more expensive at 0.50 euros ($0.6) per 20 minutes, compared to 0.50 euros for 30 minutes for the other two Asian operators.

Ofo’s bikes will be free for the first 40 minutes until the end of the year. Velib is free the first half hour for users with a subscription.

Kennel said Ofo operate more than 10 million bikes in 200 cities worldwide, the vast majority in China, and a few thousand in Europe, including in Milan, Madrid, Vienna, Prague, London and Cambridge.

Ofo, which has raised more than $1 billion from Chinese venture capitalists, including Alibaba Group Holding Ltd., will cooperate with Paris city authorities, which have said they want to regulate the dockless bike plans to prevent chaos on Paris sidewalks.

The dockless bikes can be found and unlocked with a mobile phone app, and after use they can be left anywhere. So far there have been no pile-ups as have been seen on Chinese roads.

The new Asian bike share operators’ entry into the Paris market is well timed, as longtime Velib operator JCDecaux is replaced by the Smoovengo consortium, which won a 600-700 million euro ($700-$825 million) contract to run the Paris city bike-sharing system from 2018 to 2032.

Dozens of Velib docking stations have been out of order for weeks as Velib’s old docking stations are replaced with Smoovengo’s new stations.

The Paris city government is building more bike lanes as it tries to reduce automobile traffic in a bid to cut pollution.

($1 = 0.8486 euros)
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New Jimi Hendrix Album With Unreleased Songs Coming in March

By Uponent | | No Comments | Entertainment

Unreleased songs recorded by Jimi Hendrix between 1968 and 1970 will be released next year.

 

Experience Hendrix and Legacy Recordings announced Wednesday that they will release Hendrix’s “Both Sides of the Sky” on March 9, 2018. The 13-track album includes 10 songs that have never been released.

 

Hendrix died in 1970 at age 27. The new album is the third volume in a trilogy from the guitar hero’s archive. “Valleys of Neptune” was released in 2010, followed by “People, Hell and Angels,” released in 2013.

 

Eddie Kramer, who worked as recording engineer on every Hendrix album made during the artist’s life, said in an interview that 1969 was “a very experimental year” for Hendrix, and that he was blown away as he worked on the new album.

 

“The first thing is you put the tape on and you listen to it and the hairs just stand up right on the back of your neck and you go, `Oh my God. This is too (expletive) incredible,” said Kramer. “It’s an incredible thing. Forty, 50 years later here we are and I’m listening to these tapes going, ‘Oh my God, that’s an amazing performance.”’

 

Many of the album’s tracks were recorded by Band of Gypsys, Hendrix’s trio with Buddy Miles and Billy Cox. Stephen Stills appears on two songs: “$20 Fine” and “Woodstock.”

 

“It sounds like Crosby, Stills & Nash except it’s on acid, you know,” Kramer, laughing, said of “$20 Fine.”

 

“Jimi is just rocking it,” he added. “It’s an amazing thing.”

 

Johnny Winter appears on “Things I Used to Do”; original Jimi Hendrix Experience members Mitch Mitchell and Noel Redding are featured on “Hear My Train A Comin”’; and Lonnie Youngblood is on “Georgia Blues.”

 

Kramer produced the album alongside John McDermott and Janie Hendrix, the legend’s sister and president of Experience Hendrix. Kramer said though “Both Sides of the Sky” is the last of the trilogy, someone could find new Hendrix music in an attic or a basement, which could be re-worked.

 

He also said they have live footage of Hendrix, some just audio and some in video, which they plan to release.

 

“It was amazing just to watch him in the studio or live. The brain kicks off the thought process — it goes through his brain through his heart and through his hands and onto the guitar, and it’s a seamless process,” Kramer said. “It’s like a lead guitar and a rhythm guitar at the same time, and it’s scary. There’s never been another Jimi Hendrix, at least in my mind.”
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Super-size Black Hole Is Farther From Us Than Any Other

By Uponsci | | No Comments | Science

Astronomers have discovered a super-size black hole that harks back to almost the dawn of creation.

It’s farther away from Earth than any other black hole yet found.

A team led by the Carnegie Observatories’ Eduardo Banados reported in the journal Nature on Wednesday that the black hole lies in a quasar dating to 690 million years after the Big Bang. That means the light from this quasar has been traveling our way for more than 13 billion years.

Banados said the quasar provides a unique baby picture of the universe, when it was just 5 percent of its current age.

It would be like seeing photos of a 50-year-old man when he was 2½ years old, according to Banados.

“This discovery opens up an exciting new window to understand the early universe,” he said in an email from Pasadena, California.

Quasars are incredibly bright objects deep in the cosmos, powered by black holes devouring everything around them. That makes them perfect candidates for unraveling the mysteries of the earliest cosmic times. 

 

The black hole in this newest, most distant quasar is 800 million times the mass of our sun.

Much bigger black holes are out there, but none as far away — at least among those found so far. These larger black holes have had more time to grow in the hearts of galaxies since the Big Bang, compared with the young one just observed.

“The new quasar is itself one of the first galaxies, and yet it already harbors a behemoth black hole as massive as others in the present-day universe,” co-author Xiaohui Fan of the University of Arizona’s Steward Observatory said in a statement.

Around the time of this newest quasar, the universe was emerging from a so-called Dark Ages. Stars and galaxies were first appearing and their radiation was ionizing the surrounding hydrogen gas to illuminate the cosmos.

Banados suspects there are more examples like this out there, between 20 and 100.

“The newfound quasar is so luminous and evolved that I would be surprised if this was the first quasar ever formed,” Banados said. “The universe is enormous, and searching for these very rare objects is like looking for the needle in the haystack.”

Only one other quasar has been found in this ultradistant category, despite extensive scanning. This newest quasar beats that previous record-holder by about 60 million years.

Still on the lookout, astronomers are uncertain how close they’ll get to the actual beginning of time, 13.8 billion years ago.

Banados and his team used Carnegie’s Magellan telescopes in Chile, supported by observatories in Hawaii, the American Southwest and the French Alps. 
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Gene Therapy Offers Hope of a Cure for Blood Disease

By Uponsci | | No Comments | Science

Gene therapy has freed 10 men from nearly all symptoms of hemophilia for a year so far, in a study that fuels hopes that a one-time treatment can give long-lasting help and perhaps even cure the blood disease.

Hemophilia almost always strikes males and is caused by the lack of a gene that makes a protein needed for blood to clot. Small cuts or bruises can be life-threatening, and many people need treatments once or more a week to prevent serious bleeding.

The therapy supplies the missing gene, using a virus that’s been modified so it won’t cause illness but ferries the DNA instructions to liver cells, which use them to make the clotting factor. The treatment is given through an IV.

Hope of a one-time treatment

In a study published Wednesday by the New England Journal of Medicine, all 10 men given the therapy now make clotting factor in the normal range. Bleeding episodes were reduced from about one a month before gene therapy to less than one a year. Nine of the 10 no longer need clotting factor treatments, and the 10th needs far fewer of them. There were no serious side effects.

Follow-up is still short, a year on average. Some cells with the new gene might not pass it on as they divide, so the benefits may wane over time, but they’ve lasted eight years in other tests in people and up to 12 years so far in dogs.

“The hope is that this would be a one-time treatment” to fix the problem, said the study leader, Dr. Lindsey George of Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia. 

Spark Therapeutics, the Cambridge, Massachusetts, company that makes the treatment, and Pfizer, which now is working with Spark on it, paid for the study, and some of the study leaders work for or have stock in Spark.

Dr. Matthew Porteus of Stanford University, who wrote a commentary in the journal, called the results striking and said, “I think we’re definitely on the road” to a cure. 

‘It’s pretty magical’

It feels like one to Canadians Jay and Bill Konduras, brothers who live an hour’s drive outside Toronto who were in the study.

“It’s pretty magical,” said Jay Konduras, 53, who runs a bakery and was treated in June 2016. 

“Life-changing,” said Bill Konduras, 58, a machinist treated in March.

Before, even small amounts of exertion would cause tiny muscle tears and bleeding problems requiring clotting factor treatment.

“Even something as innocuous as reaching over your head to get something out of a closet, or reaching down to tie a shoe” could trigger trouble, Bill Konduras said.

Six years ago, he nearly lost his leg after a motorcycle crash tore open an artery; he spent nearly a month in the hospital. Since the gene therapy, neither brother has needed clotting factor treatment.

Costs are unknown

The therapy is still experimental and its eventual cost is unknown, but clotting factor treatment costs about $200,000 per patient per year, Porteus said.

Another gene therapy, from BioMarin Pharmaceutical for a different form of hemophilia, also showed promise in a different study. Thirteen patients have been treated and have had a big drop in bleeding episodes and clotting factor treatments, study leaders report. One-year results will be given at an American Society of Hematology conference that starts Saturday.

Other companies are working on hemophilia treatments; Sangamo Therapeutics is testing traditional gene therapy and gene editing approaches.
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Memoir by Japan’s Hirohito Fetches $275,000 in NY

By Uponent | | No Comments | Entertainment

A memoir by Japanese Emperor Hirohito that offers his recollections of World War II fetched $275,000, nearly double its expected top price, at an auction in Manhattan on Wednesday.

The 173-page document was dictated to his aides soon after the end of the war. It was created at the request of General Douglas MacArthur, whose administration controlled Japan at the time.

 

The winning buyer was from Japan, according to Alice Lok, a spokeswoman for the auction house Bonhams. No other details were immediately provided.

The memoir, also known as the imperial monologue, covers events from the Japanese assassination of Manchurian warlord Zhang Zuolin in 1928 to the emperor’s surrender broadcast recorded on August 14, 1945.

The document’s contents caused a sensation when they were first published in Japan in 1990, just after the emperor’s death.

The two volumes are each bound with strings, the contents written vertically in pencil. It was transcribed by Hidenari Terasaki, an imperial aide and former diplomat who served as a translator when Hirohito met with McArthur.

The monologue is believed among historians to be a carefully crafted text intended to defend Hirohito’s responsibility in case he was prosecuted after the war. A 1997 documentary on Japan’s NHK television found an English translation of the memoir that supports that view.

The transcript was kept by Terasaki’s American wife, Gwen Terasaki, after his death in 1951 and then handed over to their daughter, Mariko Terasaki Miller, and her family.
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Climate ‘Refugees,’ Sidelined From Global Deal, Ask: ‘Where Is the Justice?’

By Uponbiz | | No Comments | Business

Vulnerable communities uprooted by climate change are being left out of a voluntary pact to deal with migration, campaigners said, after the United States pulled out of the global deal.

Although people within low-lying states are being forced to relocate because of worsening storms and rising seas, they will not be recognized in U.N. migration pact talks next year, putting lives at risk, campaigners said.

“Many of the situations we find ourselves in, here in the Pacific, are not caused by us. We continue to ask, ‘Where is the justice?’ Those of us who are least responsible, continue to bear the brunt,” said Emele Duituturaga, head of the Pacific Islands Association of Non-Governmental Organizations (PIANGO).

Hoping for acceptance

“We hope that there will be an openness and an acceptance that climate-induced migration is one that the world community has to be responsible for,” she said on the sidelines of a conference co-hosted by PIANGO in Fiji’s capital, Suva.

With a record 21.3 million refugees globally, the 193-member U.N. General Assembly adopted a political declaration in September 2016 in which it also agreed to spend two years negotiating a pact on safe, orderly and regular migration.

U.S. President Donald Trump this week withdrew from negotiations because the global approach to the issue was “simply not compatible with U.S. sovereignty.”

U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres regretted the U.S. decision, his spokesman said, but expressed hope the United States might re-engage in the talks ahead of the start of formal negotiations in February.

Unique heritage

Climate displacement is already a reality for Telstar Jimmy, a student from the Bank Islands in northern Vanuatu.

Her family has relocated several times because of worsening cyclones and flooding, as rising seas slowly wash away ancestral homelands and burial sites.

“The foundations of our unique heritage were taken,” she told the Thomson Reuters Foundation.

“Relocation just meant safety and continuing to exist. But now the question is: Safe and existing for how much longer?”

Worldwide, sea levels have risen 26 centimeters (10 inches) since the late 19th century, driven up by melting ice and a natural expansion of water in the oceans as they warm, U.N. data show. Seas could rise by up to a meter by 2100.

‘It’s only going to get worse’

“With climate-induced displacement, we know that there are already people, communities and countries at risk,” said Danny Sriskandarajah, head of the rights group CIVICUS, co-hosting the Fiji conference. “It’s only going to get worse [and] we need to come up with ways to manage those flows.”

PIANGO and CIVICUS are among campaign groups drafting a declaration that calls on the United Nations to recognize climate change as a key driver of migration.

The 1951 Refugee Convention recognizes that people fleeing persecution, war and conflict have the right to protection, but not those forced out by climate change.

Trump also plans to pull out of the 2015 Paris climate accord, which seeks to end the fossil fuel era this century with a radical shift to cleaner energies to curb heat waves, downpours, floods and rising sea levels.

The deal aims to hold the global temperature rise to “well below” 2 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels and try to limit the rise even further, to 1.5 degrees Celsius.

The U.S. is the only country that is not part of the climate pact after Syria and Nicaragua joined this year.

“I’m a bit nervous because other countries may also pull out with the U.S., and that’s going to be a bigger issue for us, especially at a time when we’re trying to battle climate change,” said Vanuatu local Jimmy. “Whatever each country does will impact the lives of other people around the whole globe.”
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New Apps, Gadgets on Display at this Year’s TechCrunch Berlin

By Uponsil | | No Comments | Silicon Valley

Those apps on your phone are expected to earn their developers about $77 billion this year.  Some entrepreneurs who are looking to grab a bit of that market were showing off their products in Germany this week. VOA’s Kevin Enochs reports.
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China’s Sinopec Sues Venezuela in Sign of Fraying Relations

By Uponbiz | | No Comments | Business

Sinopec USA, a subsidiary of the Chinese oil and gas conglomerate, has sued Venezuela’s state oil company PDVSA in a U.S. court, claiming it never received full payment for an order of steel rebar.

The lawsuit asks for $23.7 million for breach of contract and conspiracy to defraud. The legal action signals a split with another of Venezuela’s biggest backers as the cash-strapped country seeks to restructure some $60 billion in debt in a landscape of low oil prices and production.

The complaint suggests “patience is getting really thin at this point,” said Mark Weidemaier, law professor at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and an expert on international debt disputes. “This is a further sign of frostiness in the Chinese-Venezuelan relations.”

PDVSA declined to comment.

China, which has loaned Venezuela more than $50 billion over the past decade, recently has been reluctant to involve itself more deeply in the South American country’s debt crisis. It has curtailed its credit to Venezuela in the last 22 months because of chronic payment delays, troubles with joint venture projects, and crime faced by Chinese firms operating in the country.

In its lawsuit, filed in U.S. District Court in Houston on Nov. 27, Sinopec said PDVSA paid half of a 2012 purchase order for 45,000 tons of steel rebar, which is used in oil rigs, by its fully owned subsidiary Bariven.

It accused the Venezuelan oil company of using Bariven “as a sham to perpetrate fraud against Sinopec,” and called the PDVSA subsidiary an “undercapitalized shell with the sole purpose of preventing Sinopec from having a remedy.”

Any solution to Venezuela’s financial crisis will need the involvement of the Chinese and Russian governments, which are owed a substantial amount from the country. A Russian state-owned shipping company, Sovcomflot, also brought suit last year against PDVSA over $30 million in unpaid shipping fees.

PDVSA is in talks with a handful of European companies to obtain credit for oil and gas projects in a bid to reverse a slump in output to an almost 30-year low, and has been seeking financing from China and Russia.

But kidnappings and thefts in Caracas have prompted some Chinese executives working in the country to move to Colombia to escape the problems, sources have said. Chinese-run infrastructure projects also have faced delays.

Carmakers and small grocery stores that flourished under late president Hugo Chavez due to preferential currency exchange terms have either closed or downsized. Current president Nicolas Maduro no longer offers the same preferential terms for Chinese businesses to have access to cheap imports.

“The Chinese don’t have a whole lot to show for their loans,” a Western diplomat in Caracas said.
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‘The Last Jedi’ Aims to Capture That Old Star Wars Feeling

By Uponent | | No Comments | Entertainment

Han Solo is dead. Luke Skywalker is back, but changed. And Leia Organa’s story will soon be coming to an end. 

The Star Wars that inspired four decades of passionate fandom appears to be slowly but surely fading as “Star Wars: The Last Jedi” prepares to descend on Dec. 15, giving way to a newer generation of intergalactic rebels and their foes, like Rey and Kylo Ren, and a fresh voice behind the endeavor in writer-director Rian Johnson (“Looper”).

J.J. Abrams’ “The Force Awakens” set the stage for this new era of the franchise, but “The Last Jedi” has to move it forward and keep audiences interested for the next one too.

After all these years and billions of dollars, Star Wars isn’t exactly a scrappy underdog anymore, but the franchise is in somewhat uncharted territory. The prequels did their own damage, but at least no one had to say goodbye to their original heroes.

And then there’s the seemingly impossible standard set by that other Star Wars sequel, “The Empire Strikes Back.” 

​Premiere is Dec. 9

Besides the main cast, filmmakers and some Lucasfilm and Walt Disney Co. brass, no one will see “The Last Jedi” until the Los Angeles premiere on Dec. 9. And determining what exactly audiences should expect is a bit like trying to assemble a puzzle with no picture and most of the pieces missing. The cast has left some adjective breadcrumbs (“intense,” “emotional,” “intimate,” “cinematic”) but for the most part, it’s a mystery.  

“For me, ‘The Last Jedi’ is not a particularly happy story to tell, but it’s just my part,” Mark Hamill says cryptically. Hamill, 66, returns to play Luke Skywalker after being seen in only a few frames of “The Force Awakens,” which ends on a wind-swept cliff as the young protege Rey (Daisy Ridley) approaches him looking for training from the missing Jedi. Luke and Rey are just one of the new pairings promised for the film, which finds every character out of their comfort zone and facing new challenges as the Resistance organizes to go up against the First Order. 

 “It’s got so much going on,” Hamill adds. “You can cut from the more somber scenes I have to the action/adventure, the suspense, the humor … I’ve only seen it once but I thought, “This is too much information to process.’”

The marketing campaign, no doubt playing into the tone set by “Empire,” has focused on the darkness and intensity of “The Last Jedi,” but Johnson says that’s only one element. He stresses that it is, first and foremost, a Star Wars movie. To him, that means capturing that thing that makes you want to “run out of the theater and into your backyard” to play with your spaceship toys — even without the curmudgeonly wit of Harrison Ford’s Han Solo.

“That’s what everyone was concerned about going in: How do you do it without him?” Johnson, 43, says. “I saw so much potential for humor in it. I was looking at every single character and trying to find opportunities to break the tension. I think people are going to be surprised by how fun and light on its feet it is.” 

Expanded roster

In addition to Luke and Rey, the film brings back Carrie Fisher as Leia in her last film role (Fisher died after filming had wrapped), Adam Driver’s Kylo Ren, fresh off murdering his father Han Solo, the mysterious Supreme Leader Snoke (Andy Serkis), Domnhall Gleeson’s General Hux, the ace pilot Poe (Oscar Isaac), the ex-Stormtrooper Finn (John Boyega) and his old boss Captain Phasma (Gwendoline Christie), Chewbacca, the droids and a host of newcomers, like Laura Dern’s purple-haired Vice Admiral Holdo, a maintenance tech, Rose (Kelly Marie Tran), a hacker (Benicio Del Toro) and some cute little creatures called Porgs. 

His script, which he was able to write while “The Force Awakens” was being made, took some of the cast aback at first. 

“I was going, ‘Uh, I’m not sure about this,’” Ridley says. “It just took us all a second to be like, ‘Ok this is where the story is heading.’” 

​The new boyfriend

Johnson jokes that he’s like the new boyfriend at Thanksgiving dinner who everyone has to get used to.

“(Rian) had a different challenge which was to expand the Star Wars universe further with more inventive ideas, taking more risks,” Boyega says. “He was a real fan. I feel like he ticked off his Star Wars fanboy theories just one by one with this film.”

That fandom has also helped Johnson, who Hamill refers to as his Obi-Wan, reach a sort of zen-like state with the film. It also doesn’t hurt that Lucasfilm president Kathleen Kennedy, who has not been afraid to make tough decisions and fire or bench directors if something isn’t working, was so pleased with their collaboration and the resulting film that she has already enlisted Johnson to develop a new Star Wars trilogy separate from the Skywalker saga (he’ll write and direct the first). 

 

Loyal fanbase

Now it’s just a matter of putting “The Last Jedi” out in the world. Financially, there’s not much to worry about — it’s tracking to open somewhere in the $200 million range (far below “The Force Awakens”’ $248 million debut, but stunning nonetheless). Also box office and the expectations and hopes of a loyal fanbase, who have been burned before, are two very different things.

“Having been a Star Wars fan myself for the past 40 years, I know intimately how passionate they are about it and how everyone has stuff they love and hate in every single movie. That takes the pressure off a little bit just thinking, `Ok, there’s going to be stuff that everyone likes, there’s going to be stuff that people don’t like and it’s going to be a mixture,”’ Johnson says. 

And with a smile and a shrug, he adds: “That’s what being a Star Wars fan is.”
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‘Swiss-Made’ Label Lacks Precision for Watch Industry

By Uponbiz | | No Comments | Business

If you buy a “Swiss-made” watch thinking it’s almost entirely produced in Switzerland, you might be mistaken.

The manufacture of components including dials, sapphire glass and cases is flourishing in China, Thailand and Mauritius and many of these end up in watches designated as “Swiss-made.”

Stricter rules came into force this year for watches bearing the coveted label on their dial and for which consumers are prepared to pay a premium.

The key requirement is that 60 percent of the manufacturing costs occur in Switzerland, up from a previous 50 percent threshold that applied only to the movement – the core mechanism.

The new rules were meant to make the label more credible in the eyes of consumers and to shield the industry from Asian competition.

But the change has made it difficult for the makers of cheaper Swiss watches to cut costs and weather a harsh industry downturn. And at the same time it has left the makers of more expensive brands enough leeway to shift a chunk of component supplies to Asia to protect their profit margins.

“Since the Swiss-made rules were tightened, we have fewer orders, not more,” said Alain Marietta of dialmaker Metalem, based in Swiss watchmaking hub Le Locle. “Some customers ask us to produce half of the components in China so we can be cheaper.”

He said he was concerned about losing customers but had stuck to his principles. “We want to offer a real Swiss made in Switzerland, otherwise for the people working in the watch industry here, it’ll mean slow death.”

Cost pressures

Affordable brands struggle to make money in Switzerland, where labor costs are high, margins are low and intense foreign competition, including from smartwatches, means they can’t raise prices.

Citychamp’s Rotary brand, which had used the label for decades, offers no “Swiss-made” pieces in its latest collections, saying the new rules made it hard to deliver value and quality.

Swatch Group, whose watches span all price points and which has extensive production facilities in Switzerland, said it was benefiting from the new rules it advocated. Chief Executive Nick Hayek said in a recent newspaper interview the group might soon be without competition in affordable “Swiss-made” watches.

Mondaine Group’s Ronnie Bernheim said the group’s brands, which include popular Swiss railways watch Mondaine, had also abandoned some models that would not have met the new criteria.

National Watch Federation (FH) statistics show the value of exported watches with a retail price of up to 600 Swiss francs ($610), fell by more than 11 percent in the first 10 months of 2017, versus an overall rise of 2.4 percent for all price tags.

Watches account for roughly 10 percent of overall Swiss exports and almost 57,000 people work in the industry.

Specialist companies have sprung up that offer brands the optimum product mix that will qualify for the “Swiss-made” tag.

EOS Watch Development, for example, promises on its website to deliver “Swiss-made” products that will help customers save money by combining Swiss and Far East suppliers.

Tough at the top

At the top end of the market where timepieces sell for thousands of francs, a severe downturn in demand translated into sharply lower profits in recent years.

Profitability at luxury group Richemont and more diversified Swatch Group is recovering now, helped by improving sales, but a tight focus on costs remains vital.

“Some brands in the high end would up to now never have considered buying components abroad for ethical reasons, but also because their excessive retail prices and resulting margin levels allowed it,” said a Swiss dialmaker who asked to remain anonymous.

“The slowing demand forced almost all brands to reposition their products and they benefit from the new law, which is very explicit, to improve their margins by partly sourcing abroad.”

He said his own dial company was mainly producing in Mauritius, where salaries are much lower, but a technical bureau performing some operations in Switzerland meant the dials qualified as “Swiss-made.”

Several sources said almost all watch case makers now imported sapphire glass from Asia. Luxury watchmakers generally keep their suppliers secret, but recently there have been some initiatives denouncing this lack of transparency.

Francois Aubry, a supplier turned watchmaker, recently launched a timepiece with “99.99 percent Swiss production,” publishing the list of all its suppliers, while the Swiss CODE41 watch project raised 543,000 francs on crowdfunding platform Kickstarter with a concept of total transparency on the mostly

Chinese origin of its components.

Industry body FH said it was its task to intervene if “Swiss-made” rules were not respected. It has decided to set up a task force to make sure everybody plays by the new rules, especially once a transition period expires at the end of 2018.

However, some watchmakers have already lost patience with the system.

High-end brand H.Moser & Cie this year dumped the “Swiss-made” label while declaring its own watches over 95 percent Swiss. It denounced the official rules as “too lenient, providing no guarantee, creating confusion and encouraging abuses.”

 
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With a Small Book, Gene Simmons Ready to Make You Rich

By Uponent | | No Comments | Entertainment

Kiss co-founder and entrepreneur Gene Simmons has a new book out in which he hopes to reveal the principles of being rich and powerful.

There’s no quick fix: You’re going to have to wake up early, dress better, turn off the TV and study.

 

“On Power” is part guidebook, part self-help manual, with several profiles of people Simmons thinks we should admire, like Oprah Winfrey and Warren Buffett.

 

His advice to gaining wealth is simple: Think of a good idea, start a limited liability partnership in your home, use social media and deduct the costs from your taxes. You can keep your old job until the rewards flow in.

 

If they don’t? You can declare bankruptcy and “then you can start again.”
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Driverless Buses Take to Some Roads in California

By Uponsil | | No Comments | Silicon Valley

Imagine the day you board a bus and it starts moving. It obeys all traffic signs and stops at signal lights. All without a driver. That’s the future, happening right now at a business park in Northern California. VOA’s Carolyn Presutti takes us on what’s probably your first ride on a driverless shuttle bus.
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