US Doctor Arrested in Michigan on FGM Charges
An emergency-room doctor in the U.S. Midwest has been arrested and charged with performing female genital mutilation on girls between the ages of 6 and 8, in the first criminal case brought under a 1996 law that outlawed the practice.
Jumana Nagarwala, a 44-year-old doctor at a hospital in Detroit, Michigan, is accused of performing genital mutilation on young girls as far back as 2005, according to a criminal complaint released Thursday. The U.S. Department of Justice said she “performed horrifying acts of brutality on the most vulnerable victims.”
Nagarwala had an initial court appearance before a U.S. magistrate Thursday in Detroit and was ordered detained until Monday, pending a further hearing on the felony charges she is facing, which specifically involve two 7-year-old girls she operated on in February.
Senior officials called the charges “disturbing” and “deplorable,” and said U.S. law-enforcement agencies “are committed to doing whatever is necessary to bring an end to this barbaric practice, and to ensure no additional children fall victim to this procedure.”
Physician denies charges
A preliminary criminal complaint released by the U.S. Department of Justice said Nagarwala told federal agents she knew that performing female genital mutilation is a crime in the United States and denied that she conducted the procedure on anyone.
Nagarwala, who received her medical degree from Johns Hopkins University in Maryland, has been licensed as a physician in Michigan since 2001; state records show no formal complaints or disciplinary action against her. Her lawyer, Shannon Smith, did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the case.
If convicted, Nagarwala faces a fine and up to five years in prison for performing female genital mutilation, also known as FGM. She would be the first person prosecuted under the 1996 law prohibiting FGM.
In the most recent case outlined in the complaint, the FBI, using court-ordered telephone records and video surveillance, tracked two Minnesota mothers and their 7-year-old daughters as they visited Nagarwala at a medical office near Detroit, and where the physician allegedly performed FGM procedures on the girls two months ago.
Examination confirms FGM
One of the children told an investigator this week that they were in Michigan to see a doctor because “our tummies hurt,” and were examined by Nagarwala. The doctor reportedly told the girl she was going to perform a procedure to “get the germs out” of her body.
Doctors who examined the girls this week confirmed that their genital areas were “abnormal” and bore signs of mutilation.
The girls were interviewed by an FBI child forensic expert and identified Nagarwala as the doctor who operated on them. The parents of one of the victims later admitted to the FBI that they had taken their daughter to Nagarwala for a “cleansing” of extra skin.
The hospital that employed Nagarwala apparently was not involved in the case, and the physician was not listed as having any links to the office in Livonia, outside Detroit, where she examined the girls.
Agents of the FBI and the Department of Homeland Security, who worked together on the case, said they have identified multiple other incidents where young girls have been victims of FGM allegedly performed by Nagarwala between 2005 and 2007, according to the criminal complaint.
“Female genital mutilation constitutes a particularly brutal form of violence against women and girls,” acting U.S. Attorney Daniel Lemisch of the Eastern District of Michigan said in a statement. “The practice has no place in modern society and those who perform FGM on minors will be held accountable under federal law.”
Female genital mutilation, sometimes called female circumcision, is the ritual removal of some or all of the external female genitalia. The practice is found in Africa, Asia and the Middle East, and last year UNICEF estimated that 200 million women alive today in 30 countries — 27 African nations, Indonesia, Iraqi Kurdistan and Yemen — have undergone the procedure.
Many U.S. women at risk
Although it is illegal, female genital mutilation is practiced in some African diaspora communities in the United States. According to a 2012 study by the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Service, more than 500,000 women and girls were at risk of female genital mutilation or its consequences in the United States, more than three times higher than an earlier estimate based on 1990 census data. The study said the increase was due to rapid growth in the number of immigrants from countries where the procedure is commonly practiced.
In 2012, Congress passed a law making it illegal to transport a girl outside the United States for the purpose of performing FGM.
The practice is rooted in attempts to control women’s sexuality and ideas about purity, modesty and beauty that persist in some communities. It is usually initiated and carried out by women, some of whom see it as an honorable practice, or who fear that failing to have their daughters and granddaughters cut will expose the girls to social exclusion.
There are no known health benefits from female circumcision, but a wide range of complications can result: recurrent infections, difficulty urinating and passing menstrual flow, chronic pain, the development of cysts, an inability to get pregnant, complications during childbirth and even fatal bleeding.
A survivor’s story
“When we think of female genital mutilation, we usually think of African cultures and non-Christian religions,” said Renee Bergstrom, an American survivor of genital cutting. “However, my FGM took place in white Midwest America.”
Bergstrom and other women discussed the issue in a video produced by the U.S. State Department and posted online last month.
Until Nagarwala’s arrest, the most high-profile case related to FGM in the United States was that of a father in the state of Georgia. Khalid Adem, an Ethiopian citizen, was deported last month after serving 10 years in prison for using scissors to cut the genitals of his 2-year-old daughter. He was charged with aggravated battery and cruelty to children, not under terms of the federal FGM law invoked in Nagarwala’s case.
VOA’s Victoria Macchi contributed to this story.
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Water Out of Thin Air? It Can Be Done, Say Scientists
People living in arid, drought-ridden areas may soon be able to get water straight from a source that’s all around them — the air, American researchers said Thursday.
Scientists have developed a box that can convert low-humidity air into water, producing several liters every 12 hours, they wrote in the journal Science.
“It takes water from the air and it captures it,” said Evelyn Wang, a mechanical engineer at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and co-author of the paper.
The technology could be “really great for remote areas where there’s really limited infrastructure,” she said.
The system, which is currently in the prototype phase, uses a material that resembles powdery sand to trap air in its tiny pores. When heated by the sun or another source, water molecules in the trapped air are released and condensed — essentially “pulling” the water out of the air, the scientists said.
A recent test on a roof at MIT confirmed that the system can produce about a glass of water every hour in 20 to 30 percent humidity.
Companies like Water-Gen and EcoloBlue already produce atmospheric water-generation units that create water from air.
What is special about this new prototype, though, is that it can cultivate water in low-humidity environments using no energy, Wang said.
“It doesn’t have to be this complicated system that requires some kind refrigeration cycle,” she said in an interview with Reuters.
An estimated one-third of the world’s population lives in areas with low relative humidity, the scientists said. Areas going through droughts often experience dry air, but Wang said the new product could help them still get access to water.
“Now we can get to regions that really are pretty dry, arid regions,” she said. “We can provide them with a device, and they can use it pretty simply.”
The technology opens the door for what co-author Omar Yaghi called “personalized water.”
Yaghi, a chemistry professor at University of California, Berkeley, envisions a future where the water is produced off-grid for individual homes and possibly farms using the device.
“This application extends beyond drinking water and household purposes, off grid,” he said. “It opens the way for use of [the technology] to water large regions as in agriculture.”
In the next few years, Wang said, the developers hope to find a way to reproduce the devices on a large scale and eventually create a formal product. The resulting device, she believes, will be relatively affordable and accessible.
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Montana Hunter’s Find Leads to Discovery of Prehistoric Sea Creature
A fossil found by an elk hunter in Montana nearly seven years ago has led to the discovery of a new species of prehistoric sea creature that lived about 70 million years ago in the inland sea that flowed east of the Rocky Mountains.
The new species of elasmosaur is detailed in an article published Thursday in the Journal of Vertebrate Paleontology. Most elasmosaurs, a type of marine reptile, had necks that could stretch 18 feet, but the fossil discovered in the Charles M. Russell National Wildlife Refuge is distinct for its much shorter neck — about 7{ feet.
“This group is famous for having ridiculously long necks, I mean necks that have as many as 76 vertebrae,” said Patrick Druckenmiller, co-author of the article and a paleontologist with the University of Alaska Museum of the North. “What absolutely shocked us when we dug it out — it only had somewhere around 40 vertebrae.”
The smaller sea creature lived around the same time and in the same area as the larger ones, which is evidence contradicting the belief that elasmosaurs did not evolve over millions of years to have longer necks, co-author Danielle Serratos said.
Elasmosaurs were carnivorous creatures with small heads and paddle-like limbs that could grow as long as 30 feet. Their fossils have been discovered across the world, and the one discovered in northeastern Montana was well-preserved and nearly complete.
Hunter David Bradt came across the exposed fossil encased in rock while he was hunting for elk in the wildlife refuge in November 2010, Druckenmiller said. He recognized it as a fossil, took photographs and alerted a U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service employee.
The refuge along the Missouri River is popular with hunters for its big game and remote setting.
“This is a vast, remote and rugged place that has changed very little since Lewis and Clark passed through these lands more than 200 years ago,” refuge manager Paul Santavy said.
Bradt, who lives in Florence, Montana, did not immediately return a call for comment.
It took three days to excavate the fossil, but much longer to clean and study it before the determination could be made that it was a new species, Druckenmiller said.
He and Serratos submitted their findings to the journal last year.
Druckenmiller said the inland sea that stretched the width of Montana to Minnesota and from Canada to the Gulf of Mexico was teeming with marine reptiles, but relatively few of their fossils have been excavated.
“It’s a total bias — just more people out there are interested in land-living dinosaurs than marine reptiles,” he said. “There would be a lot more known if more people were studying them.”
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Tesla Set to Unveil Electric Semi-truck in September
Tesla CEO Elon Musk says the company plans to unveil an electric semi-truck in September.
Musk tweeted the announcement Thursday. He offered no other details about the semi, such as whether it will be equipped with Tesla’s partially self-driving Autopilot mode.
Musk also said the company plans to unveil a pickup truck in 18 to 24 months.
Tesla currently sells two electric vehicles, the Model S sedan and Model X SUV. Its lower-cost Model 3 electric car is due out by the end of this year.
But Musk revealed last summer that the Palo Alto, California-based company is working on several more vehicles, including the semi and a minibus.
Tesla shares rose nearly 3 percent in late trading Thursday in response to Musk’s tweet.
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Make Music Day Festival Coming to Dozens of US Cities
More than 50 U.S. cities will be hosting Make Music Day, a free one-day outdoor festival celebrating music and music-making.
The annual event is June 21, the summer solstice.
Highlights of Make Music Day in the U.S. will include Sousapaloozas in Chicago; Cleveland; Madison, Wisconsin; Minneapolis-St. Paul; New York; and San Jose, California.
Part of Make Music Day is an event called Mass Appeal in which musicians play together in single-instruments groups. Featured instruments will include guitars, harmonicas, accordions, trombones, bassoons, French horns and harps. More than 150 are scheduled.
Street Studios in Atlanta; Chattanooga, Tennessee; Minneapolis-St. Paul; New York; and Philadelphia will give passers-by a chance to collaborate in producing original music.
The festival began in France in 1982 and has since spread to 750 cities across 120 countries.
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University of Michigan Unveils 1,500-pound Rubik’s Cube
University of Michigan mechanical engineering students have made one of the most popular puzzle games much larger. And tougher to solve.
Seven former and current students unveiled a 1,500-pound Rubik’s Cube during a ceremony Thursday inside the G.G. Brown engineering building on the Ann Arbor campus. The massive, mostly aluminum structure is meant to be played by students and others on campus.
Four students came up with the idea three years ago and handed down the project to other students.
“It’s the largest solvable mechanical stationary Rubik’s Cube,” said Ryan Kuhn, a 22-year-old senior who helped assemble the giant puzzle this week. “It was kind of an urban myth of North Campus, this giant Rubik’s Cube that’s been going on for a while.”
The oversized version of the brain-teasing 3-D puzzle, which has flummoxed players since its heyday in the 1980s, is much harder to decipher than its diminutive counterpart, said Kuhn, who called it an “interactive mechanical art piece.”
The puzzle is solved when the player is able to manipulate the cube until all nine squares on each of its six sides display an individual color.
“It’s very reasonable that it could take at least an hour” to solve, said Martin Harris, who helped conceive the project in 2014 while hanging out in the College of Engineering honors office.
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Tiger Woods Wins First of Four Golf Masters on This Day in 1997
Twenty years ago on April 13, 1997, American athlete Tiger Woods made history, winning one of golf’s most prestigious tournaments, the Masters, in Augusta, Georgia. He became the youngest golfer to win – and he did it by 12 strokes, a record that still stands.
That day, Woods not only shot a 72-hole score of 18-under-par 270, but he also shattered the Masters record of 271 that Jack Nicklaus and Raymond Floyd had shared.
By June 1997, Woods was ranked No. 1 in the world.
Two years later, he won eight PGA tournaments, earned a record $6 million in prize money and began a winning streak that eventually tied Ben Hogan’s in 1948, the second-longest in PGA history.
Much of his success is owed to Tiger’s close relationship to his father, Earl, who coached his prodigal son since childhood.
In June 2000, Woods won his first U.S. Open, considered the most challenging golf tournament in the world. Woods shot a record 12-under-par 272 to finish 15 strokes ahead of his nearest competitors.
It was considered the greatest professional golf performance in history, surpassing even his 1997 Masters’ triumph and the 1862 showing by Old Tom Morris.
In July 2000, Woods captured the British Open, and in August the PGA championship. At the age of 24, he was the youngest player ever to win all four major golf titles and just the second to win three majors in a year.
His winning streak slowed in the 2000’s around the time he married Elin Nordegren, a Swedish former model with whom he had two children.
The golfer won his 10th major, the British Open, in 2005.
His performance fluctuated throughout the rest of the decade as he struggled with a torn ACL. His career took a further hit in 2009 in relation to a car accident outside his Florida home.
Later, several women came forward alleging they had affairs with the famous golfer. Nordegren divorced him in August 2010.
Woods’ last win took place in 2013.
Woods planned to play throughout 2017, but a nagging back injury forced him to announce last month that he was withdrawing from the 2017 Masters.
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IOC Commits to Meeting Set for Flood-hit Peru
The International Olympic Committee said Thursday that it still planned to hold its annual meeting in Lima despite the devastating recent floods in Peru.
The 2024 Olympic hosting vote between Los Angeles and Paris is set for September 13, the opening day of the IOC session.
Peru’s suitability for the weeklong Olympic meetings was questioned in ongoing fallout from heavy rains and mudslides last month.
The IOC said the Peruvian government confirmed Thursday that its preparations were “going ahead as planned.”
Peruvian President Pedro Pablo Kuczynski said hosting the Olympic meetings would “send a vital message to the world and to Peru that we are ready to welcome the world after the emergency situation.”
Last week, the IOC and Pan American Sports Organization made a $600,000 donation to flood recovery work.
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IAAF Report Finds ‘Little Progress’ by Russia in Ending Doping in Athletics
Russia’s lack of progress in cleaning up its doping culture and introducing a satisfactory testing regime continues to impede the country’s reinstatement to athletics, the IAAF said Thursday.
Providing its latest update on Russia’s state-sponsored doping system, the International Association of Athletics Federations also criticized the country’s decision to make Yelena Isinbayeva the head of the country’s scandalized anti-doping agency.
“It is difficult to see how this helps to achieve the desired change in culture in Russia track and field, or how it helps to promote an open environment for Russian whistle-blowers,” Russia task force chairman Rune Andersen said in his report to the IAAF Council.
Isinbayeva repeatedly criticized the World Anti-Doping Agency, framed doping investigations as an anti-Russian plot and called for a leading whistle-blower to be banned for life.
The two-time gold medalist and world-record holder missed the Rio de Janeiro Olympics because of a ban on Russia’s athletics team that is unlikely to be lifted soon, based on the IAAF’s fresh concerns.
Tough stance stays
“There is no reason why better progress has not been made,” IAAF President Sebastian Coe said, adding that the IAAF would not soften its tough stance.
“There is testing but it is still far too limited,” Coe said. He said the Russian investigative committee was “still refusing to hand over athlete biological passport samples for independent testing from labs”; some athletes remained in “closed cities that are difficult or impossible to get to”; coaches from a tainted system were still employed; and “we have got the head coach of RUSAF [Russia’s athletics federation] effectively refusing to sign their own pledge” to clean up its culture.
The IAAF is allowing some Russians to compete internationally as neutrals while their country remained banned, with 12 athletes proving they have been adequately tested for drugs over a lengthy period by non-Russian agencies.
The athletes are still “subject to acceptance of their entries by individual meeting organizers,” such as the Diamond League series, the IAAF has said. The 14-meet circuit opens on May 5 in Doha, Qatar.
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Microsoft: US Foreign Intel Surveillance Requests More Than Doubled
Microsoft Corp said on Thursday it had received at least a thousand surveillance requests from the U.S. government that sought user content for foreign intelligence purposes during the first half of 2016.
The amount, shared in Microsoft’s biannual transparency report, was more than double what the company said it received under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) during the preceding six-month interval, and was the highest the company has listed since 2011, when it began tracking such government surveillance orders.
The scope of spying authority granted to U.S. intelligence agencies under FISA has come under renewed scrutiny in recent weeks, sparked in part by evolving, unsubstantiated assertions from President Donald Trump and other Republicans that the Obama White House improperly spied on Trump and his associates.
Microsoft said it received between 1,000 and 1,499 FISA orders for user content between January and June of 2016, compared to between 0 and 499 during both January-June 2015 as well as the second half of 2015.
The number of user accounts impacted by FISA orders fell during the same period, however, from between 17,500 and 17,999 to between 12,000 and 12,499, according to the report.
The U.S. government only allows companies to report the volume of FISA requests in wide bands rather than specific numbers.
FISA orders, which are approved by judges who sit on the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, are tightly guarded national security secrets. Even the existence of a specific FISA order is rarely disclosed publicly.
The Washington Post reported on Tuesday that the FBI obtained a FISA order to monitor the communications of former Trump advisor Carter Page as part of an investigation into possible links between Russia and Trump’s presidential campaign.
Parts of FISA will expire at the end of the year, unless U.S. lawmakers vote to reauthorize it. Privacy advocates in Congress have been working to attach new transparency and oversight reforms to any FISA legislation, and to limit government searches of American data that is incidentally collected during foreign surveillance operations.
Microsoft also for the first time published a national security letter, a type of warrantless surveillance order used by the FBI.
Other technology companies, including Twitter Inc and Yahoo Inc, have also disclosed national security letters in recent months under a transparency measure of the USA Freedom Act that was enacted into law by the U.S. Congress in 2015.
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Facebook Cracks Down on 30,000 Fake Accounts in France
Facebook said on Thursday it is taking action against tens of thousands of fake accounts in France as the social network giant seeks to demonstrate it is doing more to halt the spread of spam as well as fake news, hoaxes and misinformation.
The Silicon Valley-based company is under intense pressure as governments across Europe threaten new laws unless Facebook moves quickly to remove extremist propaganda or other content illegal under existing regulation
Social media sites including Twitter, Google’s YouTube and Facebook also are under scrutiny for their potential to be used to manipulate voters in national elections set to take place in France and Germany in coming months.
In a blog post, Facebook said it was taking action against 30,000 fake accounts in France, deleting them in some, but not all, cases. It said its priority was to remove fake accounts with high volumes of posting activity and the biggest audiences.
“We’ve made improvements to recognize these inauthentic accounts more easily by identifying patterns of activity — without assessing the content itself,” Shabnam Shaik, a Facebook security team manager, wrote in an official blog post.
For example, the company said it is using automated detection to identify repeated posting of the same content or an increase in messages sent by such profiles.
Also on Thursday, Facebook took out full-page ads in Germany’s best-selling newspapers to educate readers on how to spot fake news.
In April, the German cabinet approved proposed new laws to force social networks to play a greater role in combating online hate speech or face fines of up to 50 million euros ($53 million).
These actions by Facebook follow moves the company has taken in recent months to make it easier for users to report potential fraud amid criticism of the social network’s role in the spread of hoaxes and fake news during the U.S. presidential elections.
It has also begun working with outside fact-checking organizations to flag stories with disputed content, and removed financial incentives that help spammers to cash in by generating advertising revenue from clicks on false news stories.
your ad hereAspiring Tech Prodigy Tries to Re-route Self-driving Cars
Austin Russell, now 22, was barely old enough to drive when he set out to create a safer navigation system for robot-controlled cars. His ambitions are about to be tested.
Five years ago, Russell co-founded Luminar Technologies, a Silicon Valley startup trying to steer the rapidly expanding self-driving car industry in a new direction. Luminar kept its work closely guarded until Thursday, when the startup revealed the first details about a product Russell is touting as a far more powerful form of “lidar,” a key sensing technology used in autonomous vehicles designed by Google, Uber and major automakers.
Lidar systems work by bouncing lasers off nearby objects and measuring the reflections to build up a detailed 3-D picture of the surrounding environment. The technology is similar to radar, which uses radio waves instead of lasers.
Russell says Luminar’s version, consisting of its own patented hardware and software, will provide 50 times more resolution and 10 times the range of current lidar systems. Those improvements, he said, will enable self-driving cars to be sold on the mass market more quickly.
Thiel backbone
During an interview in an empty warehouse on a San Francisco pier where Luminar has been testing its lidar, Russell wasn’t shy about making big claims for its technology. “When you see your vehicle is powered by Luminar, you will know you will be safer,” he said. “We need to get to the point where humans don’t have to constantly baby-sit and take control” of autonomous cars.
If Luminar’s lidar lives up to its promise, some of the world’s biggest technology and auto companies may have been upstaged by a precocious entrepreneur who says he memorized all the periodic table of the elements when he was 2 years old. By the time he turned 11, Russell says he was tinkering with supercomputers.
Like another technology prodigy — Facebook co-founder Mark Zuckerberg — Russell won the early support of PayPal co-founder Peter Thiel, who became a billionaire after investing $500,000 in Facebook during the company’s infancy.
One of Luminar’s early investors is a venture capital firm backed by Thiel and eBay founder Pierre Omidyar. Russell also dropped out of Stanford University after just three months when he won a Thiel fellowship, which pays students $100,000 to work on promising ideas instead of pursuing a degree.
Cost or safety?
Also like Zuckerberg, Russell is CEO of his company. Most of Luminar’s roughly 150 employees are older than him, including his former mentor in photonics, 45-year-old Jason Eichenholz, now the company’s chief technology officer. Russell’s father, a former commercial real estate specialist, is the company’s chief financial officer.
Now Russell will have to prove he has indeed invented something revolutionary.
While lidar is a key component in self-driving clears, some believe Luminar may be working on the wrong problem. The big issue for lidar systems these days is cost, not safety, said Alex Lidow, CEO of Efficient Power Conversion, which supplies chips for lidar. The systems currently cost thousands of dollars apiece.
“You don’t need the resolution that would allow a car to stop before a bug hits its windshield,” Lidow said. “The question comes down to, what is the exact right amount of information for the car to make exactly the right decision all the time?”
Luminar plans to being manufacturing 10,000 lidar units at a 50,000-square-foot plant in Orlando, Florida, this year. Russell won’t disclose what they’ll cost. About 100 of the lidar systems will be tested by four makers of autonomous cars that Luminar isn’t identifying. The partners include technology companies and automakers, Russell said.
The lidar landscape
Luminar will be competing against other lidar suppliers such as Velodyne and Quanergy Systems, which have each raised $150 million so far. Velodyne’s backers include Ford Motor, which invested $75 million last summer .
By comparison, Luminar has raised $36 million, some of which has been used to set up its headquarters on a former Silicon Valley ranch that used to be home for a collection of vintage military tanks.
Waymo, a company spun off from Google’s early work on self-driving cars, also looms as an imposing competitor. It hopes to sell its technology, which includes a lidar system, to automakers.
One sign of lidar’s importance: Waymo has accused Uber of stealing its technology in a high-profile legal battle. Uber has denied the allegations , contending it is designing its own superior lidar system.
Waymo’s lidar has a solid track record so far. Its self-driving cars have logged more than 2 million miles in autonomous mode on city streets without being involved in a major traffic accident. Most of the roughly three dozen accidents that Google had reported through last year were fender benders.
Russell isn’t impressed. “It’s very easy to build an autonomous vehicle that is safe 99 percent of the time,” he said. “It’s that other 1 percent that’s the tricky part.”
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Cosby Loses Bid to Question Accuser Before Trial
Bill Cosby has lost his bid to question his accuser in court before his sexual-assault case goes to trial near Philadelphia.
The 79-year-old comedian’s lawyers lost their appeal on the issue of whether accuser Andrea Constand should have been forced to testify at a preliminary hearing last year.
The Pennsylvania Supreme Court on Wednesday declined to take up Cosby’s appeal.
Pennsylvania case law allows prosecutors to use an accuser’s statements to police in court to spare victims the ordeal of having to testify repeatedly.
Cosby is charged with drugging and molesting Constand in 2004. He has pleaded not guilty and remains free on $1 million bail.
Jury selection is set to get underway next month.
your ad hereIndia’s Biggest Film Franchise Hot on Hollywood’s Heels
Dozens of animators work into the night in India’s southern city of Hyderabad, fueled by caffeine and huddled over computer screens in a darkened studio to put the finishing touches on India’s biggest and most ambitious film.
The makers of “Baahubali 2” hope its top-notch visual effects will wean Indian audiences from Hollywood blockbusters, enticing them with the magical kingdoms, rampaging armies and towering palaces of a homegrown fantasy epic.
“If art was easy, everybody would do it,” said Pete Draper, co-founder of Makuta VFX, which is stitching the film’s live-action scenes together with computer-generated imagery. “Every single shot has its own challenges. Working hours right now are crazy. We are finishing daily at 4 a.m.”
Agencies that closely track the box office say “Baahubali 2” is the most highly awaited Indian film of the decade. But the competition for Spider-Man and other movie franchises from overseas isn’t coming from Bollywood.
When it opened in cinemas in 2015, dubbed versions of “Baahubali: The Beginning,” made in the Telugu language widely spoken in India’s southern states of Andhra Pradesh and Telangana, resonated with audiences nationwide.
It used computer-generated imagery to depict ancient kingdoms and bloody wars in a quintessentially Indian battle of good versus evil.
Filmmaker S.S. Rajamouli aims to do even better when the next installment is released on April 28.
Inspired by Hollywood epics such as “Ben Hur” and “The Ten Commandments” when growing up, Rajamouli wanted to create a tentpole franchise that delivered a memorable movie experience.
But younger audiences were looking to Hollywood franchises such as “The Fast and the Furious,” and the superheroes of the Marvel and DC Comics universe for the big-screen thrills Indian cinema was unable to provide.
“They have heavy budgets, they have huge star casts and huge studios backing them,” Rajamouli, 43, said in an interview in Hyderabad, his home city. “But if we make 10 percent of it in an Indian context, with our stories, our heroes and heroines … we can easily compete.”
Visual effects head Draper was at the sprawling movie set every day of filming to make sure location shots and actors’ movements synchronised with CGI-enhanced rendering on screen.
By day, the half-built palace, an arena, the torso of a statue and a stone temple flanked by blue screens don’t look sufficiently formidable, so the team of nearly 80 animators has been given the task of fleshing out the heft and detail.
To keep down production costs on a budget of $67 million, work on the CGI-heavy movie was distributed among 35 studios across continents.
“We didn’t have any studio backing us. Raising capital was a challenge,” said Prasad Devineni, one of the producers.
If all goes well, a record-breaking run for “Baahubali 2” would be a wake-up call for Bollywood, where cinema attendance has halved from a decade ago.
In 2016, Indian box-office collections fell to 99 billion rupees ($1.5 billion), down from 101 billion a year earlier.
Bollywood, reliant on a tried-and-tested formula of romances and masala thrillers, has failed to develop its own big-ticket franchises, piggy-backing instead on “Baahubali,” with top producer Karan Johar marketing the movie in Hindi this month.
With a spinoff TV series, an animated offering for Amazon videostreaming, a comic book and a possible third film in the works, “Baahubali” could lure back Indian audiences.
“It has shown us the way — how to market, build euphoria around it,” said Rajkumar Akella, India managing director at global box-office tracker comScore.
The makers always envisaged the film as a franchise, with many narratives branching off its storyline, to hook the maximum number of viewers later.
“Our audiences might be watching English films, or Hollywood films, and getting used to them, but the blood doesn’t change, the DNA doesn’t change,” said Rajamouli.
your ad hereInnovative Art, Music, Technology Highlight Baltimore Festival
Every night, the Inner Harbor in Baltimore, Maryland glistens with an array of lights from the waterside restaurants and shops, creating lovely water reflections. But during the Light City festival, illuminated sculptures and colorful interactive light displays add to the beauty along the waterfront.
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Exoskeleton Under Development to Help With Rehab
After years of experimenting and refining, robotic devices that could help disabled people walk may soon be available to rehabilitation centers. The Japanese auto company Toyota says that before the end of this year, elderly and infirm people in Japan will be able to have therapy sessions with a walk-assist robot.
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Mass Brain Experiment Held in Los Angeles, New York
Science and science fiction intersected recently when 1,000 people took part in a brain experiment while watching a movie about what happens when the human brain is connected to a computer. The results of the experiment will help scientists better understand how the human mind works, what makes us similar, and different.
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CNBC: Apple Hires Secret Team for Treating Diabetes
Apple has hired a team of biomedical engineers as part of a secret initiative, initially envisioned by late Apple co-founder Steve Jobs, to develop sensors to treat diabetes, CNBC reported citing three people familiar with the matter.
An Apple spokeswoman declined to comment.
The engineers are expected to work at a nondescript office in Palo Alto, California, close to the corporate headquarters, CNBC said.
The news comes at the time when the line between pharmaceuticals and technology is blurring as companies are joining forces to tackle chronic diseases using high-tech devices that combine biology, software and hardware, thereby jump-starting a novel field of medicine called bioelectronics.
Last year, GlaxoSmithKline and Google parent Alphabet unveiled a joint company aimed at marketing bioelectronic devices to fight illness by attaching to individual nerves.
U.S. biotech firms Setpoint Medical and EnteroMedics Inc. have already shown early benefits of bioelectronics in treating rheumatoid arthritis and suppressing appetite in the obese.
Other companies playing around the idea of bioelectronics include Medtronic Plc, Proteus Digital Technology, Sanofi SA and Biogen.
your ad hereBurger King TV Ad for Whopper Triggers Google Home Devices
Fast-food chain Burger King said Wednesday that it would start televising a commercial for its signature Whopper sandwich that is designed to activate Google voice-controlled devices.
The move raised questions about whether marketing tactics have become too invasive.
The 15-second ad starts with a Burger King employee holding up the sandwich saying, “You’re watching a 15-second Burger King ad, which is unfortunately not enough time to explain all the fresh ingredients in the Whopper sandwich. But I’ve got an idea.
“OK, Google, what is the Whopper burger?”
If a viewer has the Google Home assistant or an Android phone with voice search enabled within listening range of the TV, that last phrase -— “Hello Google, what is the Whopper burger?” — is intended to trigger the device to search for Whopper on Google and read out the finding from Wikipedia.
“Burger King saw an opportunity to do something exciting with the emerging technology of intelligent personal assistant devices,” said a Burger King representative.
Burger King, owned by Restaurant Brands International Inc., said the ad was not being aired in collaboration with Google.
Google declined to comment, and Wikipedia was not available for comment.
The ad, which became available Wednesday on YouTube, will run in the U.S. during prime time on channels such as Spike, Comedy Central, MTV, E! and Bravo, and also on late-night shows starring Jimmy Kimmel and Jimmy Fallon.
No responses
Some media outlets, including CNN Money, reported that Google Home stopped responding to the commercial shortly after the ad became available on YouTube.
Voice-powered digital assistants such as Google Home and Amazon’s Echo have been largely a novelty for consumers since Apple’s Siri introduced the technology to the masses in 2011.
The devices can have a conversation by understanding context and relationships, and many use them for daily activities such as sending text messages and checking appointments.
Many in the industry believe the voice technology will soon become one of the main ways users interact with devices, and Apple, Google and Amazon are racing to present their assistants to as many people as possible.
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Jude Law to Play Troubled Young Dumbledore in Next ‘Fantastic Beasts’
British actor Jude Law has been cast to play a young version of Hogwarts’ venerable headmaster Albus Dumbledore, a key character in the second film of J.K. Rowling’s Fantastic Beasts movie spinoff, Warner Bros. said Wednesday.
Law, 44, best known for his role as Dr. John Watson in the Sherlock Holmes action movies, will play Dumbledore decades before he became the beloved headmaster of Hogwarts, the school where Harry Potter and his friends learned to become wizards and fight dark forces in society.
Rowling, who created Dumbledore for her best-selling Harry Potter books, has said she thinks of him as a gay man who fell in love, when he was younger, with Gellert Grindelwald, who later turned out to be evil and violent.
She told reporters in New York last year that the second Fantastic Beasts movie would show Dumbledore “as a younger man and quite a troubled man — he wasn’t always the sage. … We’ll see him at that formative period of his life.”
Johnny Depp will play Grindelwald in the second movie, for which Rowling has written the screenplay, Warner Bros. said in a statement. Filming will start this summer.
The five-movie spinoff is set some 70 years before Harry Potter goes to Hogwarts and features some new and some familiar Potter characters. The story centers around Newt Scamander, a “magizoologist” with a suitcase full of strange creatures.
Several British actors were considered for the role of young Dumbledore, including Christian Bale, Benedict Cumberbatch and Jared Harris, according to Hollywood publication Variety.
“We are thrilled to have Jude Law joining the Fantastic Beasts cast, playing a character so universally adored,” said Toby Emmerich, president and chief content officer of Warner Bros. Pictures.
The first Fantastic Beasts film, released in November, made some $813 million at the global box office. The second of the movies, which is yet to be titled, is due for release in November 2018.
The eight Harry Potter movies made $7 billion at the global box office.
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Artist Wants Role for Michelle Obama in Rosa Parks House Project
American artist Ryan Mendoza, who has moved the former house of the late civil rights icon Rosa Parks from Detroit to Berlin, says he would like to return it to the United States one day.
Parks’ refusal in 1955 to give up her bus seat in Alabama for a white passenger became a symbol of the U.S. civil rights movement. She later moved to Detroit, where the house she lived in faced demolition until her niece, Rhea McCauley, bought it.
McCauley paid $500 for the two-story dwelling and in turn handed it over to Mendoza, who painstakingly stripped it into 2,000 pieces and paid $13,000 to move it to Berlin, where he has put it back together outside his studio.
Now he wants to move the house back to the United States.
“This house really belongs in the United States,” he told Reuters. “It doesn’t belong here, but since it is here, it encourages more people to think about why it was on the demolition list.”
Mendoza would also like to involve former U.S. first lady Michelle Obama in the project.
“It would be the perfect solution if Michelle Obama became the ambassador of this project,” he said. “She has the courage and she totally convinced me when she said what was so obvious: that the White House was built by slaves.”
Former U.S. President Barack Obama is due to join German Chancellor Angela Merkel in Berlin in May as part of celebrations to mark 500 years of Protestantism in Europe.
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Sculptor of Wall Street’s Bull Wants ‘Fearless Girl’ Moved
The sculptor of Wall Street’s “Charging Bull” says New York City is violating his legal rights by forcing his bronze beast to face off against the “Fearless Girl.”
Artist Arturo Di Modica said Wednesday that the new neighboring statue changes his bull into something negative.
He says the bull’s message is supposed to be “freedom in the world, peace, strength, power and love.”
His lawyers say “Fearless Girl” exploits the bull for commercial purposes. They want it moved and are hoping for an amicable solution.
Artist Kristen Visbal’s statue of a girl with her hands on her hips was placed on the traffic island on March 7.
Mayor Bill de Blasio says men who don’t like women taking up space “are exactly why we need ‘Fearless Girl.'”
your ad hereLoud Shrimp Named After Rock Band
A shrimp that uses a very loud sound to stun its prey has been named after legendary rock band Pink Floyd.
The Synalpheus pinkfloydi, a kind of pistol shrimp, has an oversized pink claw, which, when snapped, creates a blast that’s louder than a gunshot.
Sammy de Grave of Oxford University’s Museum of Natural History, who named the shrimp, combined the loudness, the pink color and his love for Pink Floyd to come up with the name.
“I have been listening to Floyd since The Wall was released in 1979, when I was 14 years old. I’ve seen them play live several times since, including the Hyde Park reunion gig for Live 8 in 2005,” he told The Telegraph newspaper, referencing the anti-poverty benefit concerts. “The description of this new species of pistol shrimp was the perfect opportunity to finally give a nod to my favorite band.”
When Synalpheus pinkfloydi snaps its claw, it creates a “high-pressure cavitation bubble which collapses to produce one of the loudest sounds in the ocean,” The Telegraph reported. The sound can be as loud as 210 decibels, which is enough to stun or kill small fish.
The bubble is also hot, reaching temperatures as high as 4,400 degrees Celsius.
This is not the first time de Grave has named a crustacean after his love of rock and roll, the BBC reports. The Elephantis jaggerai is a tribute to Mick Jagger, front man of the Rolling Stones.
De Grave’s description of the shrimp, which was discovered off the Pacific coast of Panama, was published in the journal Zootaxa.
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KFC to Stop Using Chickens Raised with Human Antibiotics
KFC says it plans to stop serving chicken given antibiotics important to human health.
The fried chicken chain says the change will be completed by the end of next year at all its U.S. restaurants. Other fast-food companies have made similar pledges, including McDonald’s Corp.
Meat producers give animals antibiotics to make them grow faster and prevent illness, a practice that has become a public health issue. Officials say it can lead to germs becoming resistant to drugs, making antibiotics no longer effective in treating some illnesses in humans.
KFC, owned by Louisville, Kentucky-based Yum Brands Inc., has more than 4,000 restaurants in the U.S.
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