01/23/2018 | UPONSOFT

A Grammy Curse? Milli Vanilli’s Fab Morvan, Others Reflect

By Uponent | 01/23/2018 | No Comments | Entertainment

Winning the best new artist Grammy is a goal for most breakthrough performers, but for some of its recipients, it can create pressure to match previous success or surpass it.

That’s why some feel that winning the award is a slight curse.

The Recording Academy has been known for picking the wrong best new artist winner over the years. Some of the world’s greatest musicians have lost the award, including Elton John, Elvis Costello and the Dixie Chicks. Taylor Swift lost, too, though it was understandably to Amy Winehouse. But other choices may surprise you — Macklemore & Ryan Lewis not only beat out Kendrick Lamar, but they won over Ed Sheeran.

But sometimes the Grammys gets it right: The Beatles, Bette Midler, Mariah Carey, John Legend and Adele are some of the superstars who have picked up the honor, and have followed up their wins with impressive work.

We take a look at four acts who won best new artist and what life was like afterward.

Milli Vanilli

Fab Morvan of Milli Vanilli said even before the Grammys asked the duo to return its best new artist award, the group planned to give it back.

“We didn’t sing on the record. That is 100 percent, so we wanted to give it back. It was the right thing to do,” he said in a recent interview with The Associated Press. “And to this day it got twisted [and people thought] the Grammys wanted it back, when in fact we were the first to say, ‘We want to give it back.”‘

Milli Vanilli, who won the honor at the 1990 Grammys, had to famously return the award after the public learned Morvan and Rob Pilatus didn’t sing on the duo’s 1989 U.S. debut, Girl You Know It’s True.

Morvan said despite that, it was still an honor to be nominated and that he and Pilatus, who died in 1998, still put in a lot of work.

“People might say, ‘Well, you know, they didn’t sing on the record.’ But look at the rest. We were the heart and soul of Milli Vanilli. We did those 107 cities [on tour] … in eight months,” he said. “We worked hard. We worked our butts off. We entertained people.”

Milli Vanilli beat out acts like Indigo Girls, Soul II Soul, Neneh Cherry and Tone Loc for the honor. In some ways, Morvan feels winning the Grammy actually hurt the group.

“We were a target, an easy target at that. So, you know, winning the award definitely made us a major target. It pissed people off,” he said.

Jody Watley

Winning best new artist for Jody Watley was vindication in its finest form.

“I remember reading at the time when I quit Shalamar in 1983, ‘Jody Watley’s future will probably be the most in doubt,”‘ she recalled with a laugh. “Pretty much everyone made sure that I knew that they thought I would fail. Everyone said that it would be the biggest mistake of my life, that I would live to regret it. And so … getting nominated and winning it is one of the greatest moments of my life.”

Watley had previously been nominated for a Grammy with Shalamar, so being a nominee for best new artist surprised some people. She won the honor at the 1988 show over Swing Out Sister, Cutting Crew, Terence Trent D’Arby and Breakfast Club.

“When people ask the question, it’s like, ‘Well, get over it. I was eligible and I was the best new artist.’ And I shut a lot of people up,” she said, laughing again.

Watley’s 1987 debut launched five hits, including the Top 10 pop hits, “Looking for a New Love,” “Don’t You Want Me” and “Some Kind of Lover.” She said winning didn’t create pressure for her second album, which launched three more Top 10 pop smashes.

Watley said she knows that the conversation around winning best new artist “sometimes … has a negative connotation,” but she wants to remind people that she’s “a great success story.”

The 58-year-old is currently recording music in the group SLR — Sexy Real Love — and said she could return to the Grammys.

“I was teasing the guys and I was saying, ‘Maybe we’ll make history and we’ll end up nominated for best new artist,” she said. “Because I think we would be eligible.”

Arrested Development

Arrested Development marked history when they won best new artist in 1993, becoming the first rap act to do so.

It opened doors for hip-hop performers like Lauryn Hill, Chance the Rapper and Macklemore & Ryan Lewis to win the same honor.

“People who had never explored [hip-hop] and didn’t totally get it really got what we were bringing out,” said Speech, the lead vocalist and co-founder of the progressive rap group. “It made me proud that we were sort of like introducing hip-hop to a large audience.”

Arrested Development’s 1992 debut, 3 Years, 5 Months and 2 Days in the Life Of…, was a departure from the gangster rap that had dominated radio at the time. The album had three Top 10 pop hits, including “Mr. Wendal,” “People Everyday” and “Tennessee,” which won the group another Grammy.

But following their debut album wasn’t an easy task, Speech said.

“For our second album, the label was more in a business model thinking about quarters and when can they make the biggest impact from a first to fourth quarter standpoint, and things that have less to do with the heart [of making music],” Speech said. “So if I had a chance to do it over again, I just would have just taken more time on the second album, regardless of how it sells. It’s not even because it didn’t sell as well as the first, but just because that’s what the art deserves.”

“If you take four or five years or if you take a few months, whatever it is for you, take that time and really pour it in just like you likely did on your first project or on the project that got you best new artist,” he added.

Debby Boone

Being named best new artist in 1978 was an “out of body experience” for Debby Boone, who had a huge hit with the song, “You Light Up My Life.”

But following up the win had some challenges.

“It did create pressure. And I think it added to the discouragement when that was not what happened, you know, if people believed in me and now I’m letting them down, a little bit of that,” she said.

Though Boone didn’t match the achievements of her debut album and single, she still released music that charted successfully and won more Grammy Awards.

But she admits she has “mixed feelings about” how things took off after her best new artist win.

“I thought everybody knew more than me. So even when I didn’t particularly like the choices that were being made on my behalf, I would tell myself, ‘These are the experts. These guys know. I don’t like this song, but I’m going to give it my best shot.’ And that’s because my success happened suddenly,” she said. “When ‘You Light Up My Life’ took off, I didn’t know which direction I wanted to go. I knew what I liked, but I didn’t trust that what I liked would be liked by other people.”

“And now I’m old enough to realize, first of all, I don’t want to spend my life doing things that I don’t believe in, or love, or feel passionate about,” the 61-year-old added. “I think the healthiest attitude at this stage of my life, and even 20 years ago, is to say, ‘It is what happened.”‘

Boone is a Grammy voter and says when looking at the best new artist nominees, she’s voting “for who I think has a talent that is most promising to continue giving us wonderful music.”

“And though I haven’t had a string of hit records, basically on the strength of that hit record, I have, for 40 years, had a very full life of performing and recording,” she said. “And I’m nothing but grateful.”

The 60th annual Grammy Awards will air live from Madison Square Garden in New York City on Sunday. Nominees for best new artist are R&B singers SZA and Khalid, pop singers Alessia Cara and Julia Michaels, and rapper Lil Uzi Vert.
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New Orleans Revives 1894 Tabasco Opera

By Uponent | 01/23/2018 | No Comments | Entertainment

Love, hate and hot sauce are themes of a 19th-century comic opera being produced this week as a kickoff to New Orleans’ 300th anniversary. It’s also the 150th anniversary for Tabasco sauce and the New Orleans Opera’s 75th.

Tabasco: a Burlesque Opera had been stuck in an attic for more than a century when conductor Paul Mauffray found a program from its 1894 tour in archives for the opera company and its predecessors.

“At first I thought it couldn’t be Tabasco — that Tabasco hadn’t been around that long,” Mauffray said. But an official history of McIlhenny Co., which makes the sauce, showed that Tabasco predated the opera by 26 years, and that McIlhenny had sponsored the original tour.

The Tabasco-making company underwrote the sold-out production running Thursday to Sunday.

Composer George Whitefield Chadwick was well-known in his day, Mauffray said, and if Tabasco had its due, “it would be the founding cornerstone of our American history in the opera. It was not just some little show that was done here once. It was the most popular American opera from the pre-20th century.”

Opera has been a big part of New Orleans’ social and musical scene going back to the late 1700s. Mauffray was trying to learn more of its history when he found the program in a box in 2009.

This opera might be rooted in the comical genre that brought fame to the British duo Gilbert and Sullivan.

Commissioned by cadets

Chadwick attended a music conservatory in Leipzig, Germany, a decade after W.S. Gilbert, and probably studied under some of the same masters, Mauffray said. Chadwick was commissioned to write Tabasco in 1893 by a corps of well-to-do Army cadets in Boston. The cadets performed it in January 1894 as a fundraiser, winning critical notice for the shapely, clean-shaven legs of the young men acting women’s parts.

It went on to more than 40 professional performances in New York. “This time, the reviewers said it sounded so much better when the women’s parts were sung by women,” Mauffray said.

About the same time, the great Antonin Dvorak, then director of the National Conservatory of Music of America in New York, presented Chadwick with a national composition prize for one of his symphonies.

Impresario Thomas Q. Seabrook acquired touring rights for Tabasco and asked McIlhenny’s permission to use its trademark. John Avery McIlhenny, eldest son of the hot sauce’s creator, agreed, and provided free samples for the audience.

“As far as I know, that’s the earliest we gave out miniature bottles,” company historian Shane Bernard said.

“We’re still making those minis today,” company president and CEO Tony Simmons said. “I think we did about 30 million of them in 2017.”

Lengthy run

The show played in at least 48 cities, from Dallas to Rhode Island, when Chadwick realized he wasn’t getting royalties, Mauffray said.

Chadwick had Seabrook arrested and took back his music. When asked about a revival in the early 1900s, Chadwick — who had a composition then being performed by the New York Philharmonic under Gustav Mahler — declined, writing that comic opera was no longer his style, according to Mauffray.

Mauffray tried for years to locate the opera. In 2012, he got access to a box that Chadwick’s descendants were sending to be archived. He found instrumental parts and three different scripts. Reconstruction took “a lot of detective work and piecework and bits and pieces had to be rewritten,” Mauffray said.

The show is directed by Pacific Opera Project director Josh Shaw, who’s known for reimagining Mozart’s Escape from the Seraglio as a Star Trek episode and for Puccini’s La Boheme: AKA “The Hipsters.”

The opera’s wacky plot involves traders, a harem girl named Fatima and her older counterpart Hasbeena, a sultan obsessed with spicy food, and Dennis O’Grady, a drunk who impersonates a French chef. A bottle of Tabasco saves O’Grady’s life, trader Marco falls for Fatima, and trader Lola for O’Grady. There’s also a boatload of dancing girls and a plot to assassinate the sultan by putting a bomb in a fancy chest he believes to hold Tabasco.

The plot may seem outlandish to modern audiences, but a souvenir some spectators will get at the show has withstood the test of time: mini bottles of Tabasco.
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Survey: US Mayors View Climate Change as Pressing Urban Issue

By Uponsci | 01/23/2018 | No Comments | Science

U.S. mayors increasingly view climate change as a pressing urban issue, so much so that many advocate policies that could inconvenience residents or even hurt their cities financially.

The annual survey of big-city executives, released Tuesday by the Boston University Initiative on Cities, also reflected the nation’s sharp political divide. Ninety-five percent of Democratic mayors who responded believed climate change was caused by human activities, a view shared by only half of Republican mayors.

A clear majority of mayors were prepared to confront President Donald Trump’s administration over climate change and felt their cities could be influential in counteracting the policies of the Republican president, who at times has called global warming a hoax and last year withdrew the U.S. from the Paris climate accord.

“A striking 68 percent of mayors agree that cities should play a strong role in reducing the effects of climate change, even if it means sacrificing revenues or increasing expenditures,” a report accompanying the survey stated.

Boston mayor started survey

In all, 115 mayors of cities with at least 75,000 residents answered the fourth annual survey named for Thomas Menino, a longtime Democratic mayor of Boston who founded the university program before his death in 2014. The survey was sponsored in part by The Rockefeller Foundation and Citigroup.

Organizers of the survey declined to release a list of the 115 mayors who responded, citing confidentially agreements. According to the report, nearly two-thirds of the mayors were Democrats and the cities had an average population of 233,000.

The survey cited the availability and affordability of housing as the single most pressing concern of mayors, followed closely by climate change and municipal budget pressures caused in part by federal and state cuts.

A foreword to the report, signed by Democratic Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti and Betsy Price, the Republican mayor of Fort Worth, Texas, argued that cities can exert formidable influence over U.S. and global policies.

“At a time when the national conversation is divisive, cities offer a sense of hope and shared identity,” the mayors said.

Democrats support changes

Sixty-eight percent of mayors said they would be willing to expend additional resources or sacrifice revenue to combat climate change.

Democrats were more than twice as likely as Republicans to promote environmental policies that might inconvenience motorists in their cities, and almost three times as likely to support entering into regional climate pacts or networks. Yet only 26 percent of Democrats and 5 percent of Republican mayors were eager to slap any costly new regulations on the private sector.

The survey found that attitudes about climate change differed geographically as well as politically. For example, 90 percent of all Eastern mayors and 97 percent from the Midwest blamed human activities for climate change, compared to 70 percent from Southern cities.

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Drug Companies Told to Do More to Tackle ‘Superbug’ Crisis

By Uponsci | 01/23/2018 | No Comments | Science

Drugmakers’ response to the threat posed by “superbugs” remains patchy even after years of warnings, according to the first analysis of individual companies’ efforts to tackle the antibiotic resistance crisis.

The rise of drug-resistant bacteria is a growing threat to modern medicine with the emergence of infections resistant to even last-resort antibiotics — a situation made worse in recent years by overuse of antibiotics and cutbacks in drug research.

New analysis by the nonprofit Access to Medicine Foundation (AMF), published Tuesday, found that GlaxoSmithKline and Johnson & Johnson were doing more than most among large research-based pharmaceutical companies to tackle the problem, while Mylan led the way among generic drugmakers and Entasis was top among biotechs.

Overall, GSK led the field with 55 antimicrobial pipeline projects, including 13 vaccines.

But action taken by such companies is only the start of what could be done to address the problem, which former Goldman Sachs chief economist Jim O’Neill in 2014 estimated could cause 10 million deaths a year worldwide by 2050.

“The whole of modern medicine depends on being able to control and treat infections,” said Jeremy Farrar, director of the Wellcome Trust charity. “Perhaps the most exciting area of medicine at the moment, immunotherapies for cancer, is impossible unless you can control infection.”

‘Definitely more’ should be done

While more experimental antibiotics are now moving through development than a few years ago, the number is still down from what it was during the 1980s and 1990s. And a lot more work needs to be done to ensure appropriate use of medicines — both new ones and the thousands of metric tons of older pills churned out each year by generic companies.

“There’s definitely more that all companies can do,” said Jayasree Iyer, executive director of AMF, which published the analysis at the World Economic Forum annual meeting in Davos, Switzerland. “We need to strengthen the research and development pipeline, and when new products reach the market, we need to ensure that they are used in a conservative way so that misuse and overuse is limited.”

There are now 28 experimental antibiotics in late-stage development against critical pathogens, but only two of these are supported by plans to ensure they can be both made accessible and used wisely if they reach the market.

The AMF said four companies — GSK, Shionogi, Pfizer and Novartis — had taken steps to separate sales representatives’ bonuses from the volume of antibiotics sold, but that much more needed to be done across the industry to counter overuse.

Another under-recognized problem is the pollution caused by mass production of antibiotics, due to lax oversight of wastewater runoff.

In India’s Hyderabad region, for example, the presence of hundreds of drug factories and inadequate water treatment has left lakes and rivers laced with antibiotics, making the area a giant petri dish for anti-microbial resistance.

The AMF urged multinational drugmakers to do more to ensure that their suppliers of bulk antibiotic ingredients were complying with rigorous wastewater standards.
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China Online Quiz Craze Lures Prize Seekers, Tech Giants

By Uponsil | 01/23/2018 | No Comments | Silicon Valley

It seems like a game everyone wins: Some of China’s biggest tech companies, looking to hook in new consumers, are using cash prizes to draw millions of contenders to mobile-based online quiz shows.

Up to 6 million people at a time log into the free, live games on their smartphones to answer a series of rapid-fire questions in an elimination battle, with those remaining sharing the prize money.

Over the weekend, search engine giant Baidu and video game maker NetEase launched their own online shows, joining news feed platform Toutiao, Alibaba Group Holding Ltd-owned UCWeb and Wang Sicong, the scion of Chinese billionaire Wang Jianlin.

But how they will cash in on the games and stay on the right side of government censors might prove to be a tricky question.

The trivia games have drawn some controversy, heightened by a broader crackdown on online content during the last year under President Xi Jinping, from livestreams and blogs to a campaign against internet addiction.

This month, one quiz show, “Millions Winner,” backed by internet security company Qihoo 360, apologized after it was chastised by a regulator for listing Taiwan and Hong Kong, over which China claims sovereignty, as independent countries in a question.

How firms will monetize the craze is also not yet clear, though some companies, such as online retailer JD.com, have already jumped on the trend, sponsoring shows to help raise their profiles. Many of the games show ads to players during the shows.

“If you ask me why I do this, to be honest, I don’t really know if I can make money,” Zhou Hongyi, chairman of Qihoo, said at an event where he presented a contestant with a 1 million yuan ($156,115.84) prize check two weeks ago. “But from a user’s perspective, I think this is really fun.”

The quiz mania underlines the fierce appetite of China’s consumers for internet entertainment, a trend helping drive billions of dollars of investment into digital news portals, online gaming, internet advertising and television content.

“I heard about this game from a friend who won 1,700 yuan in one day. I immediately decided to join up myself,” Wang Ting, a 26-year-old graduate student in Qingdao, told Reuters. She now spends three hours each day on her phone playing the games.

Uncertain future

Questions, read by a live host, might include: “From which country were pineapples imported to China in the 16th century?” “In which dynasty was the lamb hot pot invented?” or “How many fingers does Mickey Mouse have?”

Contestants get 10 seconds — a time frame designed cut out cheating — to select the correct answer from a choice of three.

Winnings can be up to 3 million yuan per game, but are often split between many winners.

Toutiao parent Bytedance said that “millions of our users” had taken part in its live quiz “Million Dollar Hero” since the show launched at the start of January. It also has a tougher “Hero Game” with harder questions and bigger prizes.

“We’ve been running for just two weeks, so it’s still in the very early stages, but it’s encouraging to see how the game has taken off across the country, and with all age groups,” the company said in a statement to Reuters.

Toutiao, a highly popular news feed app, was valued at around $20 billion in a fundraising last year, sources close to the company told Reuters.

Raymond Wang, managing partner at Beijing law firm Anli Partners, said the shows were a “relatively low-cost way to get to users,” but cautioned there were political and technical risks.

Wang Ran, a prominent investor and head of Beijing-based private investment bank CEC Capital Group, posed a question on his WeChat account about the future of the online quiz show trend.

“A) Growing numbers will jump into the market. B) Someone will win 10 million yuan in one go. C) Authorities will strictly crack down on it. 10 seconds. Go!”
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US Health Official Urges Flu Vaccinations as Pediatric Deaths Mount

By Uponsci | 01/23/2018 | No Comments | Science

Of the 30 U.S. children who have died from the flu this season, some 85 percent likely will not have been vaccinated, said Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Director Dr. Brenda Fitzgerald, who urged Americans to get flu shots amid one of the most severe flu seasons in years.

“My message is, if you haven’t gotten a vaccine, please get a vaccine. Also, please get your children vaccinated,” said Fitzgerald, who is urging citizens “to take every advantage that you can to protect yourself.”

The dominant strain during this flu season is an especially nasty type called influenza A (H3N2) that in seasons past has been linked with severe disease and death, especially in the elderly and young. This year’s seasonal flu epidemic is especially severe.

In past flu seasons, between 80 and 85 percent of children who have died from the flu had not gotten a flu vaccine that season, the agency said in an email.

In its latest report, the CDC said the virus is present in every state, with 32 states reporting severe flu activity.

Although the vaccine is only estimated to be about 30 percent effective against the H3N2 strain, it has been shown in studies to reduce severity and duration if people do become infected, said Dr. Dan Jernigan, director of the influenza division at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Fitzgerald conceded in a telephone interview that reports that the flu vaccine in Australia was only 10 percent effective may have caused people to think the vaccine would not be worth the trouble.

Fitzgerald said the agency’s flu division has been on the job during the three-day federal government shutdown. Senators on Monday reached a deal to keep the government funded through Feb. 8.

Studies have shown that even a vaccine that has lower overall effectiveness can decrease the number of days spent in hospital, duration of the flu and the degree of symptoms.

“That helps support the point of getting a vaccine,” Jernigan said.

Fitzgerald said the flu vaccine and antiviral drugs used to fight the flu are widely available across the country, noting that people can go to the CDC website and enter their zip code to find the nearest flu clinics with vaccines.

Fitzgerald also recommended that people frequently wash their hands or use hand sanitizer, avoid those who are sick or coughing, and carry disinfectant wipes.

The CDC does not have numbers for adult deaths from the flu because adult flu is not a reportable disease in all U.S. states. But she said North Carolina, which collects such data, has reported 42 adult flu deaths this season.

Official estimates from the CDC are expected at the end of the current season, based on a calculation from hospitals and states reporting data to the agency.

In the 2014/2015 flu season, in which the H3N2 strain was also the leading strain, there were an estimated 35.6 million cases, 710,000 hospitalizations and 56,000 deaths. At this point, it is not clear whether the current flu season will surpass those estimates, Jernigan said.
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Legendary South African Trumpeter Hugh Masekela Dies

By Uponent | 01/23/2018 | No Comments | Entertainment

Hugh Masekela, the trumpeter, composer and anti-apartheid activist known as the “father of South African jazz” has died at the age of 78 in Johannesburg.

A statement by released by his family Tuesday said Masekela, affectionately called “Bra Hugh,” passed away “after a protracted and courageous battle with prostate cancer.” He announced last October that he was being treated for the disease, which was first diagnosed in 2008.

Masekela’s five-decade career began in earnest in the 1950s, when he helped create the Johannesburg jazz scene as a member of the bebop sextet Jazz Epistles, but fled South Africa in the 1960s to spend the next three decades in exile.

He befriended American singer and activist Harry Belafonte, and he increasingly used his music to protest the indignities and repression of white-minority rule in his homeland. Among his better known protest tunes were “Soweto Blues,” and “Bring Him Back Home,” an anthem demanding the release of anti-apartheid icon Nelson Mandela from prison.

Masekela scored an international number-one hit in 1968 with the breezy tune “Grazing in the Grass.” He later collaborated with American pop star Paul Simon in the 1980s. He was briefly married in the 1960s to Miriam Makeba, the legendary South African singer and activist.

South African President Jacob Zuma praised Masekela in a statement Tuesday, saying he “kept the torch of freedom alive” through his music, and that “his contribution to the struggle for liberation will never be forgotten.”

Arts and Culture Minister Nathi Mthethwa wrote on Twitter that “Bra Hugh was one of the great architects of Afro-Jazz and he uplifted the soul of our nation through his timeless music.”
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Team USA Parade Uniforms Include Touch of American Frontier

By Uponent | 01/23/2018 | No Comments | Entertainment

Polo Ralph Lauren unveiled Team USA’s Olympic parade uniforms Monday and social media haters can leave the ugly sweater jokes back in Sochi.

Roundly mocked in 2014 for a chaotic, patchwork cardigan sweater, the brand went classic red, white and blue this time around for the opening ceremony and white for the closing parade of athletes in Pyeongchang, South Korea. Both have a cozy bit of technology built in to keep athletes extra warm.

Athletes will be treated to stretchy skinny jeans and a far less busily designed sweater for opening, with a stretch knit pant – think structured sweat pant – for closing. The jeans have moto-inspired seaming. Accessories include a navy wool ski hat and USA-themed navy bandanna. On the athletes’ feet will be brown suede mountaineering boots with red laces for the outdoor opening.

And then there are the gloves. They’re more Ralph than Ralph himself, a Western style in suede with fringe in rawhide brown and decorated in hand-beaded Olympic rings and an American flag. They’re lined in white and fit over the wrists. Warm, yes. Yee haw! Lasso not included.

David Lauren, the youngest son of the brand’s namesake and the company’s chief innovation officer, was proud of the technology for the tri-colored parkas in mostly navy blue and the bombers for the end of the Winter Games.

In a process developed exclusively for the brand, the heating system is made of electronic printed conductive inks in silver and black in the shape of an America flag and bonded to the interior backs of the jackets, he said. Athletes can control basic settings using their cellphones for up to five hours of heat on high and up to 11 hours on low, fully charged.

A limited number were released for sale to fans and were selling quickly, Lauren said. All garments are American made.

The brand has been the official outfitter of the U.S. Olympic Committee and Team USA since 2008. The uniforms will also be worn by the Paralympic Games teams.

“Every season we learn from the athletes,” Lauren said. “We work very closely with them, where we find out what makes them comfortable as they’re walking out on this amazing stage in front of the entire world.”

The story Lauren is trying to tell this time around is a celebration of the past, he said, “so we have gloves inspired by the frontier movement, we have jeans that celebrate another era of American entrepreneurship and jackets that heat up, which show that America is continuing to evolve.”

The jacket technology displays the temperature inside the garment to help the athletes decide on settings.

The company was looking to display a boldness in the looks this year. It was about comfort, however, as opposed to playing into the tumultuous politics of the last year.

And what does Lauren say to critics who have poked fun in the past?

“We’re very proud to work with Team USA,” he said. “This year we’re excited to say that most of the outfits have already sold out.”

Enthusiasts can buy pieces online and in a handful of Ralph Lauren stores around the country, including a customizable ski hat, Lauren said. A portion of proceeds will be donated to athletes’ training.

The uniforms were modeled in a Polo Ralph Lauren store in downtown Manhattan by sister-brother, Lauren-sponsored ice dancing team Maia and Alex Shibutani.

“The jacket is going to be perfect for the cold weather,” Alex said. “We love the jacket especially.”

Maia was impressed by the stretch in the jeans.

“I’m going to be wearing these all the time, definitely.”

And those gloves?

“There’s some nice detailing,” Alex offered. “There’s ‘Polo’ right there on the side.”
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New Radiation Cancer Treatment Machine for Uganda

By Uponsci | 01/23/2018 | No Comments | Science

Uganda’s cancer patients can finally breathe a sigh of relief after the country got a new cobalt-60 radiation treatment machine. But, health officials say this may not be enough because of an ever increasing number of cancer cases in the country. Halima Athumani reports for VOA from Kampala.
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Virtual Reality Tech Makes Gaming a Full Body Experience

By Uponsil | 01/23/2018 | No Comments | Silicon Valley

There’s little doubt that virtual reality is likely to be the future of video gaming. Now, a Russian company in Moscow is pushing the limits of the technology with a game changing VR experience. VOA’s Kevin Enochs reports.
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US Auto Parts Firms Urge NAFTA Compromise to Cover Engineering Work

By Uponbiz | 01/23/2018 | No Comments | Business

A trade group representing U.S. auto parts makers on Monday urged the Trump administration to adopt NAFTA automotive rules that cover research, engineering, design and software development work as part of North American regional value content goals.

The proposal from the Motor and Equipment Manufacturers Association (MEMA) was sent to U.S. Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer as a sixth round of negotiations to revise the North American Free Trade Agreement began in Montreal.

U.S. demands for sweeping changes to automotive content rules are among the most contentious issues in the NAFTA talks, including a requirement that half the value of all North American vehicles come from the United States and a far higher content requirement of 85 percent from North America.

Canada and Mexico have said the U.S. targets are unworkable, but have not responded with counter-proposals.

They are expected to do so at the Montreal talks ending Jan 29. Lack of progress in bridging the gap on autos could jeopardize the negotiations and increase the chances that President Donald Trump follows through on his threat to seek a U.S. withdrawal from NAFTA.

The U.S. auto industry, including MEMA and trade groups representing Detroit and foreign-brand automakers, have largely sided with Canada and Mexico in arguing that the U.S. proposals would hurt the industry’s competitiveness.

The MEMA letter to Lighthizer makes no mention of the proposed U.S. and regional content targets, and focuses instead on recommendations that its members believe will help retain and grow automotive jobs in the United States.

“We think it lines up very well with the president’s initiatives and his stated goals for NAFTA and other free trade agreements,” Ann Wilson, MEMA’s senior vice president of government affairs, told Reuters. “What we have been trying to do is find other ways of getting to the president’s objectives without getting to a 50 percent domestic requirement.”

Counting the well-paid engineering, design, research and software development as part of a vehicle’s value content would provide an incentive for companies to retain jobs doing this work now largely done in the United States.

The proposal also urges the Trump administration to preserve “tariff-shifting” for automotive parts as a means to retain the higher value-added work being done on sophisticated automotive electronics and other systems.

Currently, companies that import components and materials into North America and convert them into automotive parts can “shift,” or apply, NAFTA tariff-free benefits to such inputs.

For example, off-the-shelf electronics parts from Asia such as lidar and radar units, cameras, sensors and circuit boards currently gain this benefit as they are assembled into vehicle crash avoidance systems. Steel tubing converted to fuel injectors also can gain such benefits.

But the current USTR autos proposal would require that virtually all components be subject to a “tracing list” to verify their North American origin so they can count toward regional value targets.

The tracing list would be expanded to steel, glass, plastic resins and other materials, under the proposal.

Industry executives have argued that these requirements are likely to push auto and parts companies to source more products outside the region and simply pay the low 2.5 percent U.S. tariffs on many parts.

MEMA also urged Lighthizer to negotiate an agreement that provides incentives to U.S. companies to train and expand the U.S. workforce, as parts companies struggle to fill open positions amid rising retirements. The group also urged that aftermarket parts be subject to the same NAFTA rules as original equipment parts.
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China Invites Latin America to Take Part in ‘One Belt, One Road’

By Uponbiz | 01/23/2018 | No Comments | Business

China invited Latin American and Caribbean countries to join its “One Belt, One Road” initiative on Monday, as part of an agreement to deepen economic and political cooperation in a region where U.S. influence is historically strong.

Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi said the region was a natural fit for the initiative, which China has leveraged to deepen economic and financial cooperation with developing nations.

“China will always stay committed to the path of peaceful development and the win-win strategy of opening up and stands ready to share development dividends with all countries,” Wang said at a meeting between China and 33 members of the Community of Latin American and Caribbean States (CELAC).

Representatives from China and CELAC signed a broad agreement to expand ties in the second time China has met with CELAC – a bloc formed in Venezuela in 2011 that does not include the United States or Canada.

Though it had few specific details, the agreement is part of an evolving and more aggressive Chinese foreign policy in Latin America as the United States, under President Donald Trump, has taken a more protectionist stance.

The “One Belt, One Road” initiative, proposed in 2013 by Chinese President Xi Jinping, promotes expanding links between Asia, Africa and Europe, with billions of dollars in infrastructure investment.

Wang emphasized projects to improve connectivity between land and sea, and cited the need to jointly build “logistic, electricity and information pathways.”

The so-called Santiago declaration, signed by China and CELAC delegates, also calls for bolstering trade and taking action on climate change.

Chile Foreign Minister Heraldo Munoz, who has criticized Trump in the past, said the agreement marked an “historic” new era of dialogue between the region and China.

“China said something that is very important, that it wants to be our must trustworthy partner in Latin America and the Caribbean and we greatly value that,” said Munoz. “This meeting represents a categoric repudiation of protectionism and unilateralism.”

China has sought a bigger role overseas since Trump was elected, presenting its Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership trade agreement as an alternative to the Trans-Pacific Partnership, which the United States has abandoned.

The country is already testing U.S. dominance in Latin America, offering the region $250 billion in investment over the next decade. It is the top trading partner of many countries in the region, including Brazil, Chile and Argentina.

Still, Wang played down the idea of a race for influence.

“It has nothing to do with geopolitical competition. It follows the principle of achieving shared growth through discussion and collaboration,” Wang said in his remarks. “It is nothing like a zero sum game.”

In recent years, Chinese companies have moved away from merely buying Latin American raw materials and are diversifying into sectors such as auto manufacturing, e-commerce and even

technology businesses such as car-hailing services.

“Our relations with China are very broad, this (CELAC) is one more pathway for Brazil to work with China. Together we identified more areas of cooperation,” said Brazil’s Vice Foreign Minister Marcos Galvao.
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After 90-year Wait, Minnie Mouse Gets Her Hollywood Moment

By Uponent | 01/23/2018 | No Comments | Entertainment

She waited 90 years and saw a trail of men and Disney princesses get there before her, but on Monday Minnie Mouse finally got a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.

Minnie Mouse made her movie debut in the 1928 film “Steamboat Willie,” and her co-star and beau Mickey Mouse got his bronze plaque on Hollywood Boulevard back in 1978.

But it took another 40 years for Minnie, who appeared in more than 70 animated movies, to join him on the Walk of Fame.

“In true Hollywood fashion, she delivered a memorable performance but Mickey got all the credit,” Walt Disney Co. Chief Executive Bob Iger said at the ceremony unveiling the 2,627th star.

“After 90 years in show business, it’s certainly about time you got your star,” Iger said.

Minnie has been celebrated as a fashion icon, pop culture staple and a character who brings joy to children worldwide, and an actor dressed as the cartoon character waved and batted her eyelashes throughout Monday’s ceremony.

“This is the best day ever. Thank you, thank you, thank you,” she squeaked from the red and white polka dot stage.

Pop star Katy Perry, also dressed in red and white polka dots for the occasion, said she had been a fan of Minnie since the age of two or three.

“Minnie-and-Mickey-printed diapers – that was my first memory ever and it turned into a lifelong devotion,” the “Firework” singer said.

“No one rocks a bow, or the color red, quite like her,” Perry added.

Walk of Fame honorees are selected by the Hollywood Chamber of Commerce.

Women have stepped up their campaign in recent years for equal pay in Hollywood and better representation behind and in front of the camera.

It took Minnie much longer than her boyfriend to receive Monday’s accolade because Disney only nominated her last year, Walk of Fame producer Ana Martinez told the Thomson Reuters Foundation.

“Maybe he was more popular back in the day,” Martinez said.

Donald Duck, Tinker Bell, Snow White and other Disney characters were immortalized on the Walk of Fame before Minnie.
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Neil Diamond Retires From Touring, Says He Has Parkinson’s Disease

By Uponent | 01/23/2018 | No Comments | Entertainment

U.S. singer-songwriter Neil Diamond, one of pop music’s all-time best-selling artists, has been diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease and plans to retire from touring, his official website said on Monday.

The onset of the disease has made it difficult for him to travel and perform on a large-scale, a statement on the site said, adding he will be cancelling upcoming concert dates in Australia and New Zealand and offering refunds.

“It is with great reluctance and disappointment that I announce my retirement from concert touring. I have been so honored to bring my shows to the public for the past 50 years,” Diamond said in the statement, offering apologies to those who purchased tickets to his upcoming shows.

Diamond, known for hits including “Sweet Caroline” and “Cracklin’ Rosie,” said he plans to remain active in song writing and recording.

Later this week, Diamond will turn 77 and on Sunday the Recording Academy plans to honor him with its Lifetime Achievement Award.

Diamond has sold more than 130 million albums worldwide and 38 of his singles have made it to the Top 40, according to the academy.

Grammy-award winner Diamond, a fixture in American pop music since he began recording in the 1960s, has been inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.

“My thanks goes out to my loyal and devoted audiences around the world. You will always have my appreciation for your support and encouragement,” Diamond said.

“This ride has been — so good, so good, so good — thanks to you,” he said.
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‘Hobbit’ Director Peter Jackson Making WWI Documentary

By Uponent | 01/23/2018 | No Comments | Entertainment

“The Lord of the Rings” director Peter Jackson is going from Middle Earth to the Western Front, transforming grainy black-and-white footage of World War I into 3-D color for a new documentary film.

Jackson’s movie, announced Monday, is among dozens of artworks commissioned by British cultural bodies to commemorate 100 years since the final year of the 1914-18 war.

The New Zealand-based director of “The Hobbit” and “Lord of the Rings” series has restored film from the Imperial War Museum using cutting-edge digital technology and hand coloring, pairing it with archive audio recollections from veterans of the conflict.

He said the aim is to close the 100-year time gap and show “what it was like to fight in the war.”

“We all know what First World War footage looks like,” Jackson said in comments broadcast Monday. “It’s sped-up, it’s fast, like Charlie Chaplin, grainy, jumpy, scratchy, and it immediately blocks you from actually connecting with the events on screen.”

“But the results we have got are absolutely unbelievable. They are way beyond what I expected. This footage looks like it was shot in the last week or two, with high definition cameras,” he added.

The film will premiere during the London Film Festival in October before being broadcast on BBC television. Every school in the U.K. will also receive a copy.

The film is part of the government-backed 14-18 Now project, which has presented works by more than 200 artists over four years to remember a conflict in which 20 million people died.

Other works premiering this year include a large-scale performance piece by South African artist William Kentridge about African porters who served in the war; processions to mark the 100th anniversary of some British women winning the right to vote; and a performance celebrating wartime homing pigeons that includes birds fitted with LED lights.

“Slumdog Millionaire” director Danny Boyle — who helmed the 2012 London Olympics opening ceremony — will create a mass-participation work to be performed on the anniversary of the Nov. 11, 1918, armistice that ended the war.
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Social Media Has Mixed Effect on Democracies, Says Facebook

By Uponsil | 01/23/2018 | No Comments | Silicon Valley

Facebook took a hard look in the mirror with a post Monday questioning the impact of social media on democracies worldwide and saying it has a “moral duty” to understand how it is being used.

Over the past 18 months, the company has faced growing criticism for its limited understanding of how misinformation campaigns and governments are using its service to suppress democracy and make people afraid to speak out.

“I wish I could guarantee that the positives are destined to outweigh the negatives, but I can’t,” wrote Samidh Chakrabarti, Facebook’s product manager of civic engagement.

Since the 2016 U.S. presidential election, Facebook has been looking more critically at how it is being used. Some of what it found raises questions about company’s long-standing position that social media is a force for good in people’s lives.

In December, in a post titled “Is Spending Time on Social Media Bad for Us?” the company wrote about its potential negative effects on people.

The self-criticism campaign extended to Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg’s personal goals. Each year he publicly resolves to reach one personal goal, which in the past included learning Mandarin, reading more books and running a mile every day.

This year, Zuckerberg said his goal is to fix some of the tough issues facing Facebook, including “defending against interference by nation states.”

Foreign Interference

During the 2016 U.S. election, Russian-based organizations were able to reach 126 million people in the U.S. with 80,000 posts, essentially using social media as “an information weapon,” wrote Chakrabarti. The company made a series of changes to make politics on its site more transparent, he wrote.

False News

Facebook is trying to combat misinformation campaigns by making it easier to report fake news and to provide more context to the news sources people see on Facebook.

“Even with these countermeasures, the battle will never end,” Chakrabarti wrote.

One of the harder problems to tackle, he said, are so-called “filter bubbles,” people only seeing news and opinion pieces from one point of view. Critics say some social media sites show people only stories they are likely to agree with, which polarizes public opinion.

One obvious solution – showing people the opposite point of view – doesn’t necessarily work, he wrote. Seeing contrarian articles makes people dig in even more to their point of view and create more polarizations, according to many social scientists, Chakrabarti said.

A different approach is showing people additional articles related to the one they are reading.

Reaction to Facebook’s introspection was mixed with some praising the company for looking at its blind spots. But not everyone applauded.

“Facebook is seriously asking this question years too late,” tweeted Jillian York, director for international freedom of expression for the Electronic Frontier Foundation.
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WHO: Brazil’s Death Toll From Yellow Fever Triples

By Uponsci | 01/23/2018 | No Comments | Science

The number of confirmed cases of yellow fever outbreak in Brazil has tripled in recent weeks, with 20 deaths since July, the World Health Organization (WHO) said on Monday.

Of 35 confirmed cases, 20 were in Sao Paulo state, which includes South America’s largest city, Sao Paulo. Earlier this month, a case of the disease was confirmed in the Netherlands for a traveler who had recently been in that state.

The WHO recommended last week that foreign travelers get vaccinated before visiting.

But Brazil’s Health Ministry has said the recommendation, coming just weeks before Carnival, a holiday event in which tens of thousands of tourists descend on Brazil, would not cause it to change its advisory that only travelers going to rural areas be vaccinated.

Last week, Brazilians lined up for hours to get yellow fever vaccinations in the country’s largest states, alarmed by the increase in the number of fatal cases of infection and a warning from the WHO to tourists visiting parts of the country.

Yellow fever is a viral disease transmitted by mosquitoes in tropical regions and is still a major killer in Africa. It had largely been brought under control in the Americas.

The first sign that the fever was back in Brazil was the death last year of hundreds of monkeys in the Atlantic rain forest in the states of Rio de Janeiro, Espirito Santo and Sao Paulo.
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EU Mulls New Link Between Budget, Civic Rights

By Uponbiz | 01/23/2018 | No Comments | Business

The EU’s justice commissioner is working on a proposal that could oblige member states such as Poland, which has clashed with Brussels over reforms to its courts, to pass tests on the independence of their judicial systems before receiving funding.

Vera Jourova said there was agreement within the executive European Commission to work on ideas to encourage strong judiciaries in planning for the new budget from 2021.

“One way could be to insist that independent justice systems are necessary for effective control of the use of EU funds,” she said. “I would like to propose that link.”

Seven-year budget plan

A Commission spokesman said on Monday the work by Jourova was part of broader preparations for a new, seven-year EU budget plan, due to be published in May, and was in line with policy outlines the EU executive has put forward since last year.

The remarks by Jourova, the Commission’s Czech member, come as the EU executive is challenging Poland, a major recipient of Union funds, to amend judicial reforms which Brussels says will hurt democracy and its oversight of EU trading rules.

Facing the prospect of filling a hole left in the budget by Britain’s exit from the EU, and irritated by Poland and other governments in the ex-communist east on a range of issues, some wealthy Western governments have pushed for a clearer link between getting subsidies and abiding by EU standards.

Warning for Poland

The German commissioner in charge of the budget, Guenther Oettinger, warned Poland this month that it could lose some of its 7 billion euros annual funding if it fails to heed Brussels’ complaints about undermining the rule of law.

More broadly, Jourova is also hoping for a review of EU policy on judicial standards in the second half of this year. EU officials say that might, for example, include regular reviews of the performance of national justice systems, along the lines of existing biennial reviews of government economic policies, which are meant to promote “convergence” toward EU-wide goals.

‘Cohesion’ policy

As a former national official handling the regional funding that is a key part of EU efforts to bring poor regions closer to the prosperity of others, Jourova stressed that she saw any new rules applying to all EU funding for all states, not just to so-called “cohesion” policy. She also said it should not be seen as a punitive measure but designed to encourage good practice.

She also said discussion on the proposals could be used to help simplify some of the hurdles to applying for EU funds.

Any Commission proposal seen as too radical by governments risk being killed off by member states.

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