01/22/2023 | UPONSOFT

Lisa Marie Presley Mourned in Memorial Service at Graceland

By Uponent | 01/22/2023 | No Comments | Business, Entertainment

Hundreds of mourners gathered at Graceland on Sunday morning to pay their respects to singer Lisa Marie Presley in a memorial service at the mansion in Memphis, Tennessee, she inherited from her father, rock legend Elvis Presley.

Presley died on Jan. 12 at the age of 54. Earlier that day, she had been rushed to a Los Angeles-area hospital after reportedly suffering cardiac arrest at her home.

“Our heart is broken, Lisa, and we all love you,” her mother, Priscilla Presley, said at the service on the front lawn of Graceland. “Lisa Marie Presley was an icon, a role model, a superhero to many people all over the world.”

Singers Alanis Morissette, Billy Corgan and Axl Rose performed.

Lisa Marie Presley is survived by her daughters, actress Riley Keough and 14-year-old twins Finley and Harper Lockwood.

Two days before her death, she had appeared with her mother, Priscilla Presley, at the Golden Globe Awards in Beverly Hills, California, where actor Austin Butler won the best actor award for portraying her father in the film “Elvis.” Butler paid tribute to both women in his acceptance speech.

Presley began her music career in the 2000s with two albums, “To Whom It May Concern” and “Now What,” that made the top 10 of the Billboard 200 album chart.

She was married and divorced four times, including to pop star Michael Jackson and actor Nicholas Cage.

She was the only child of one of the greatest stars in American music, and was 9 years old when Elvis Presley died of heart failure at age 42 in 1977 at Graceland. The mansion is now a popular tourist attraction.

Elvis Presley and other members of his family are buried at Graceland’s Meditation Garden.

Lisa Marie Presley was buried there before the memorial service alongside the grave of her son, Benjamin Keough, who died in 2020 at age 27, a death ruled a suicide by the Los Angeles County coroner. In a recent essay, she had described herself as “destroyed” by her son’s death.

After the memorial service, mourners were due to form a procession past Lisa Marie Presley’s grave.
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India Blocks ‘Hostile’ BBC Documentary on PM Modi

By Uponent | 01/22/2023 | No Comments | Business, Entertainment

India’s government said it has blocked videos and tweets sharing links to a BBC documentary about Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s role during deadly 2002 sectarian riots, calling it “hostile propaganda and anti-India garbage.”

The British broadcaster’s program alleges that the Hindu nationalist Modi, premier of Gujarat state at the time, ordered police to turn a blind eye to the orgy of violence there that left at least 1,000 people dead, most of them minority Muslims.

Kanchan Gupta, an adviser to the government, tweeted Saturday that the Indian government used emergency powers under IT rules to block the documentary and its clips from being shared on social media.

“Videos sharing @BBCWorld hostile propaganda and anti-India garbage, disguised as ‘documentary,’ on @YouTube and tweets sharing links to the BBC documentary have been blocked under India’s sovereign laws and rules,” he said.

Orders were also issued to Twitter to block over 50 tweets with links to YouTube videos.

Both YouTube and Twitter have complied with the instructions, Gupta said.

Neither firm was available for comment Sunday.

Several tweets with clips of the documentary, India: The Modi Question, which has not been aired in the world’s largest democracy, were still available Sunday.

The 2002 riots in Gujarat began after 59 Hindu pilgrims were killed in a fire on a train. Thirty-one Muslims were convicted of criminal conspiracy and murder over that incident.

The BBC documentary cited a previously classified British foreign ministry report quoting unnamed sources saying that Modi met senior police officers and “ordered them not to intervene” in the anti-Muslim violence by right-wing Hindu groups that followed.

The violence was “politically motivated” and the aim “was to purge Muslims from Hindu areas,” the foreign ministry report said.

The “systematic campaign of violence has all the hallmarks of ethnic cleansing” and was impossible “without the climate of impunity created by the state Government … Narendra Modi is directly responsible,” it concluded.

Travel ban

Modi, who ran Gujarat from 2001 until his election as prime minister in 2014, was briefly subject to a travel ban by the United States over the violence.

A special investigative team appointed by the Indian Supreme Court to probe the role of Modi and others in the violence said in 2012 it did not find any evidence to prosecute the then chief minister.

Gupta said multiple ministries had examined the documentary and “found it casting aspersions on the authority and credibility of Supreme Court of India, sowing divisions among various Indian communities, and making unsubstantiated allegations.”

“Accordingly, @BBCWorld’s vile propaganda was found to be undermining the sovereignty and integrity of India, and having the potential to adversely impact India’s friendly relations with foreign countries as also public order within the country,” he said.
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Big Waves to Deliver Storied Hawaii Surf Contest The Eddie

By Uponent | 01/22/2023 | No Comments | Business, Entertainment

One of the world’s most prestigious and storied surfing contests is expected to be held Sunday in Hawaii for the first time in seven years.

And this year female surfers will be competing alongside the men for the first time in the 39-year history of The Eddie Aikau Big Wave Invitational.

The event — alternatively known simply as The Eddie — is a one-day contest held in Waimea Bay on Oahu’s North Shore only when the surf is consistently large enough during the winter big wave surfing season from mid-December through mid-March. The wind, the tides and the direction of the swell also have to be just right.

“Large enough” means 6 meters by Hawaii measurements. That’s equivalent to about 12 meters when measured by methods used in the rest of the U.S. Before this year, conditions have only aligned for it to be held nine times since the initial competition in 1984.

Organizer Clyde Aikau said at a news conference Friday that he was expecting waves to reach 7.6-9 meters by Hawaii measurements or 15-18 meters on the national scale.

“Yes, The Eddie will go on Sunday,” he said.

Other places around the world have big wave surfing events: Mavericks in California, Nazare in Portugal and Peahi on Hawaii’s Maui Island. But author Stuart Coleman says The Eddie is distinguished by how it honors Eddie Aikau, a legendary Native Hawaiian waterman, for his selflessness, courage and sacrifice.

“What makes this contest the most unique is that it’s in memory of a particular individual who really has transcended his time and place when he lived,” said Coleman, who wrote Eddie Would Go, a biography of Aikau.

Edward Ryon Makuahanai Aikau rose to prominence as the first lifeguard hired by Honolulu to work on Oahu’s North Shore and was revered for saving over 500 people during his career. He’s also famous for surfing towering waves that no one else would dare ride.

Aikau died in 1978 at the age of 31 during an expedition to sail a traditional Polynesian voyaging canoe from Honolulu to Tahiti. Just hours out of port, the giant double-hulled canoe known as the Hokulea took on water and overturned in stormy weather. Aikau volunteered to paddle several miles to nearby Lanai Island on his surfboard to get help for the rest of the crew but was never seen again.

The U.S. Coast Guard rescued the remaining crew a few hours later after being alerted by a commercial plane that spotted the canoe.

Coleman said The Eddie is about the best of big wave surfing and the best of Hawaiian culture.

“They always say at the opening ceremony, where they gather to launch the holding period, ’This is not just a contest. We’re not surfing against each other. We’re surfing in the spirit of Eddie,’” Coleman said.

This year organizers have invited 40 competitors and 18 alternates from around the world, including Kelly Slater, who has won a record 11 world surfing titles. John John Florence, who hails from the North Shore and who has won two back-to-back world titles, has also been asked to join.

Keala Kennelly of Kauai, a women’s big wave surf champion, is among the female invitees.

Mindy Pennybacker, a surf columnist for the Honolulu Star-Advertiser and author of the upcoming book Surfing Sisterhood Hawaii: Wahine Reclaiming the Waves said there’s long been an assumption that Waimea was too dangerous for women and they couldn’t surf there.

She said they’ve had to fight to be included and have meanwhile shown that they could handle big waves in spots around the world.

“To see women — not only women surfing Waimea but women and men sharing the same event together, with mutual respect and equality — I’m just really thrilled at the thought,” Pennybacker said.

The contest is expected to attract tens of thousands of spectators to the two-lane highway winding through the North Shore and the small towns that dot the coastal community.

Kathleen Pahinui, the chairperson of the North Shore Neighborhood Board, said it will be good for businesses, restaurants and shops. She urged visitors to carpool and take the bus because the roads will be congested.

“I wish all the participants the best of luck,” she said.
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Canada Leads World in Organ Donations from Euthanasia

By Uponsci | 01/22/2023 | No Comments | Business, Science, Silicon Valley

A study published in the December 2022 issue of the American Journal of Transplantation finds Canada leading the world in harvesting organs from those who received medical assistance in dying.

The study found that in Canada, Belgium, the Netherlands and Spain, a total of 286 people who sought euthanasia provided organs to save the lives of 837 people. Almost half of those donors, 136, came from Canada.

Patients who choose a medically assisted death due to suffering from cancer cannot be organ donors, due to the medications that are usually taken. Usable donors were suffering from diseases such as amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, Parkinson’s disease or multiple sclerosis.

Arthur Schafer, director of the Centre for Professional and Applied Ethics at the University of Manitoba, is pleased with the findings of the report.

“I was rather proud to learn that Canadian patients who receive medical assistance in dying have been given the opportunity to make something morally significant out of their death, by opting to give life through their organs to other patients,”‘ he said.

Nicole Scheidl, executive director of Ottawa-based Physicians for Life, had a very different reaction.

“I was shocked,” she said. “I also think that it really undermines the organ donation framework in this country.”

A longtime opponent of any form of euthanasia, Scheidl said it reminds her of suspected organ harvesting of executed prisoners in places such as the People’s Republic of China.

“I think people are concerned,” she said. “I know transplant teams would want to make sure that individuals who were euthanized were not coerced.”

Scheidl added that more questions should be asked about euthanasia in Canada. She said there is not enough oversight or data collection, and it is being expanded too fast.

Victoria-based lawyer Chris Considine represented Sue Rodriguez, who suffered from amyotrophic lateral sclerosis and made world headlines in the early 1990s for seeking a medically assisted death, which was rejected at the time by Canada’s Supreme Court.

He said the use of organs from patients who received medical assistance in dying, also known as MAID, is something he thought about back then.

“I knew that it would take 20 years for the law to change,” he said. “And that society would then gradually adapt the law to its needs and based on the experiences that Canadians had and the physicians had with MAID.”

Schafer said that, in the future, committees that approve medical assistance in dying should be required to notify organizations that counsel patients about organ donation.

“There shouldn’t be any conflict of interest,” said Schafer. “There shouldn’t be even a hint or a suggestion that maybe a patient was hustled into requesting MAID, or obtaining MAID earlier than they would themselves wish to do, because the doctors are eager to snatch their organs.”

MAID has been legal in Canada since 2016. The Canadian government is expected to delay a planned expansion of the law that would make euthanasia available to those with severe mental health issues.
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Loss of Tiny Organisms Hurts Ocean, Fishing, Scientists Say

By Uponsci | 01/22/2023 | No Comments | Business, Science, Silicon Valley

The warming of the waters off the East Coast has come at an invisible, but very steep cost — the loss of microscopic organisms that make up the base of the ocean’s food chain.

The growing warmth and saltiness of the Gulf of Maine off New England is causing a dramatic decrease in the production of phytoplankton, according to Maine-based scientists who recently reported results of a yearslong, NASA-funded study. Phytoplankton, sometimes described as an “invisible forest,” are tiny plant-like organisms that serve as food for marine life.

The scientists found that phytoplankton are about 65% less productive in the Gulf of Maine, part of the Atlantic Ocean bounded by New England and Canada, than they were two decades ago. The Gulf of Maine has emerged as one of the fastest warming sections of the world’s oceans.

Potential loss of phytoplankton has emerged as a serious concern in recent years in other places, such as the Bering Sea off Alaska. The loss of the tiny organisms has the ability to disrupt valuable fishing industries for species such as lobsters and scallops, and it could further jeopardize imperiled animals such as North Atlantic right whales and Atlantic puffins, scientists said.

“The drop in the productivity over these 20 years is profound,” said William Balch, a senior research scientist with Bigelow Laboratory for Ocean Sciences in East Boothbay, Maine, who led the study. “And that has large ramifications to what can grow here. The health of the ecosystem, the productivity of the ecosystem.”

The scientists did the study using data gathered since 1998 by tracking chemical changes in the Gulf of Maine. The samples used to perform the work were gathered via commercial ferries and research vessels that run the same routes over and over.

The data showed changes between the gulf and the broader Atlantic, Balch said. Intrusions of warm water from the North Atlantic since 2008 have created a gulf that is hotter, saltier and less hospitable to the phytoplankton, the study states. The scientists published their findings last June in the Journal of Geophysical Research: Biogeosciences.

Phytoplankton are eaten by larger zooplankton, small fish and crustaceans, and they are critically important to sustaining larger marine life up the food chain such as sharks and whales. Loss of phytoplankton “will likely have negative impacts on the overall productivity” of larger animals and commercial fisheries, the study states.

Decline of fish stocks in the Gulf of Maine would be especially disruptive to American fishermen because it’s a key ground for the U.S. lobster industry. Other important species such as haddock, flounder and pollock are also harvested there.

Researchers have tracked similar warming trends in the Bering Sea, Southern Ocean and northern Barents Sea in recent years. Warming’s impact on plankton is an ongoing subject of scientific inquiry. A 2020 article in the journal Nature Communications found that climate change “is predicted to trigger major shifts in the geographic distribution of marine plankton species.”

Cyclical ocean conditions also have placed more stress on phytoplankton. An El Niño climate pattern, when surface water in the equatorial Pacific becomes warmer, can reduce phytoplankton production, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration has said. The impacts include lack of anchovies off South America, fewer squid off California and less salmon in the Pacific, NOAA said.

The Maine scientists say loss of phytoplankton is also significant because the organisms absorb carbon dioxide from the atmosphere, much like plants do on land.

It’s part of the toll climate change is taking on ecosystems all over the world, said Jeff Runge, a professor in the University of Maine School of Marine Sciences, who was not involved in the study.

“There’s mounting evidence that it’s linked to climate change,” Runge said. “It’s having all kinds of effects on the system that we’re beginning to see.”
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