Company to Launch Diving Tours of Titanic
A travel company is offering a chance for well heeled travelers to dive the wreck of the RMS Titanic.
Beginning in May of next year, Blue Marble Private says it will offer a chance for nine travelers to dive some 4,000 meters below the surface of the ocean to see the famous wreck.
According to the company’s website, customers will dive “in a specially designed titanium and carbon fiber submersible, guided by a crew of experts.”
“You will glide over the ship’s deck and famous grand staircase capturing a view that very few have seen, or ever will,” the company added.
Tourists will also “explore Titanic’s massive debris field, home to numerous artifacts strewn across the ocean floor, nearly undisturbed for over a century,” according to Blue Marble Private founder Elizabeth Ellis.
According to CNN, the first trip is already sold out. The price for the eight-day adventure? $105,129 per person, which is about double the price charged by Deep Ocean Expeditions charged when it brought tourists to the wreck in 2012.
Time to visit the famous wreck may be running out.
CNN reported that a 2016 study said “extremophile bacteria” will likely dissolve what’s left of the ill-fated ship within 15 to 20 years.
In the early hours of April 15, 1912, the “unsinkable” Titanic struck an iceberg in the North Atlantic while making its maiden voyage from Southampton, England, to New York City. On board were 2,224 passengers, more than 1,500 of whom died as the ship quickly sunk.
The wreckage was first discovered 32 years ago.
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Australia Couple Are 1st Foreigners to Own US Radio Stations
An Australian couple with roots in Alaska has bought more than two dozen radio stations in three states, marking the first time federal regulators have allowed full foreign ownership of U.S. radio stations.
The Federal Communications Commission recently approved a request by Richard and Sharon Burns through their company Frontier Media to increase their interest in 29 radio stations in Alaska, Texas and Arkansas from 20 percent to 100 percent.
The agency long took what some viewed as a hard line in limiting foreign ownership under a 1930s law that harkened to war-time propaganda fears. But in 2013, it acknowledged a willingness to ease up after broadcasters complained the rules were too restrictive of outside investment.
The Burnses are citizens of Australia but have lived and worked in the U.S. since 2006, on special visas offered for Australians.
A family who owned six of the Alaska stations provided the opportunity that brought the couple to the U.S. The family wanted someone with international experience to operate the stations and help move the company forward, Richard Burns said. The stations in the Lower 48 were purchased later.
The Burnses’ request to acquire full ownership was unopposed. The acquisition includes AM and FM stations and relay stations known as translators that help provide reception.
Richard Burns said he and his wife consider Alaska home and are pursuing U.S. citizenship.
“Our life is here in Juneau, Alaska, every single day,” said Burns, who serves on the board of the Juneau Chamber of Commerce and in 2010 was named its citizen of the year.
Sharon Burns co-hosts a morning show on a Juneau country station the couple owns, and does on-air work for two of their other stations in southeast Alaska and one in Texas, her husband said. Richard Burn is the stations’ CEO and a host on their Juneau classic hits station.
The federal law restricting foreign ownership dates to the 1930s and initially was seen as a way to thwart the airing of foreign propaganda during wartime, according to the FCC. It restricts to 25 percent foreign ownership or voting interests in a company that holds a broadcast license when the commission finds that limit is in the public interest.
In 2013, in response to broadcasters, interest groups and others who considered the commission’s application of the law too rigid, the FCC clarified it has the authority to review on a case-by-case basis requests exceeding that threshold, and it is open to doing so.
The commission last year adopted rules for publicly traded companies following a case involving Pandora Media and questions about its level of foreign ownership as it pursued acquisition of a South Dakota radio station. Then-FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler said the case underscored the need for more clarity for broadcasters and investors in the review process.
It’s unclear how many other foreign citizens have a stake in U.S. radio stations. The FCC said it does not keep a comprehensive accounting because stations generally don’t have to disclose smaller or nonvoting interest holders.
Lisa Scanlan, deputy chief of the FCC’s audio division, said that as part of its public interest analysis, the commission consults with executive branch agencies that do independent reviews on issues including trade and foreign policy, national security and law enforcement.
Jessica Gonzalez is deputy director and senior counsel for the group Free Press, which has concerns about media consolidation. She said she’s not opposed to the Burnses’ case. But she said the larger the company, the more skeptical she becomes.
“I’m not fond at all of the idea of giant foreign companies or giant domestic companies buying up a bunch of radio stations,” she said. “It’s problematic.”
She said an owner’s nationality doesn’t make a difference to her. “It’s just a matter of whether or not they are actually going to serve their community,” she said.
Richard Burns agreed. He said it’s critical for radio station owners to be invested in the communities they serve.
He cited his wife, who does her show from Texas when she’s there. Around Christmas last year, Sharon Burns delivered cookies to and spent time with first responders.
“If you’re a good radio operator, I don’t think it matters if you’re foreign or not, as long as you engage in the community and you understand it,” he said.
your ad hereInside a Nigerian Hospital Fighting to Reduce Maternal Death Rate
Nigeria has one of the world’s worst rates of maternal mortality. 58,000 Nigerian women died from pregnancy complications in 2015. Health workers at a hospital in northern Kaduna state are trying to improve maternal health. Chika Oduah gives us an inside look at the hospital’s maternity ward.
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Ivory Coast Infant Separated From Parasitic Twin
Doctors at a Chicago-area hospital have successfully operated on a baby from Africa born with a parasitic twin and having four legs and two spines.The girl, known only as “Dominique” from Ivory Coast, is recovering well from the delicate and groundbreaking March 8 surgery and is expected to live a normal, fully-functional life.
Advocate Children’s Hospital in Park Ridge, Illinois, Tuesday announced that the 10-month-old, being cared for by a local foster family, underwent six hours of surgery involving dozens of healthcare providers and five surgeons, including pediatric specialist Dr. John Ruge.
“This is a situation where identical twins failed to separate. And, they can be connected in a variety of different manners,” said Dr. Ruge.
Baby Dominique was born with her parasitic twin’s waist, legs and feet growing out of her back. She was also born with two spines. Without surgery her life would likely not be a long one with deformity and pain. Her heart and lungs were working to support the equivalent of two bodies.
“It’s as if the twin, from the waist down, had been attached to the back of Dominique’s neck. And, there was a pelvis and bladder, and functional legs that moved, and feet coming out of the back of Dominique’s neck. Now, this made it extremely dangerous for Dominique.”
Doctors used scans and imaging to create a three-dimensional model of her two spines. A second bladder behind the extra limbs had to be removed.
The team of surgeons performed a mock operation to prepare for the surgery performed March 8 and lasting six hours, which involved disconnecting nerves and blood vessels to prevent numbness or paralysis.
“So, we took her to the operating room,” said Dr. Frank Vicari, who was also part of the team. “We approached the problem, the critical part being at the base of the junction of two spines and the abnormal pelvis. And, once we had control of that, I think it was pretty clear to most people in the operating room that we were going to be able to accomplish this surgery.”
All that remains is part of an abnormal bone that stabilizes her spinal column. Dominique was able to sit up the next day and was discharged five days later, although she still has two intertwined spines. But, doctors do not believe that will hinder her from having a long and productive life. It is hoped she will be reunited with her family in Ivory Coast next month.
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Chuck Barris, ‘Gong Show’ Creator, Dies at 87
Chuck Barris, whose game show empire included The Dating Game, The Newlywed Game and that infamous factory of cheese, The Gong Show, died at 87.
Barris died of natural causes Tuesday afternoon at his home in Palisades, New York, according to publicist Paul Shefrin, who announced the death on behalf of Barris’ family.
Barris made game show history right off the bat, in 1966, with The Dating Game, hosted by Jim Lange. The gimmick: a young female questions three males, hidden from her view, to determine which would be the best date. Sometimes the process was switched, with a male questioning three females. But in all cases the questions were designed by the show’s writers to elicit sexy answers.
Future celebrities
Celebrities and future celebrities who appeared as contestants included Michael Jackson, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Steve Martin and a pre-Charlie’s Angels Farrah Fawcett, introduced as “an accomplished artist and sculptress” with a dream to open her own gallery.
After the show became a hit on both daytime and nighttime TV, the Barris machine accelerated. New products included The Newlywed Game, The Parent Game, The Family Game and even The Game Game.
At one point Barris was supplying the television networks with 27 hours of entertainment a week, mostly in five-days-a-week daytime game shows.
The grinning, curly-haired Barris became a familiar face as creator and host of The Gong Show, which aired from 1976 to 1980.
Patterned after the Major Bowes Amateur Hour show that was a radio hit in the 1930s, the program featured performers who had peculiar talents and, often, no talent at all. When the latter appeared on the show, Barris would strike an oversize gong, the show’s equivalent of vaudeville’s hook. The victims would then be mercilessly berated by the manic Barris, with a hat often yanked down over his eyes and ears, and a crew of second-tier celebrities.
Occasionally, someone would actually launch a successful career through the show. One example was the late country musician BoxCar Willie, who was a 1977 Gong Show winner.
Known as
He called himself “The King of Daytime Television,” but to critics he was “The King of Schlock” or “The Baron of Bad Taste.”
As The Gong Show and Barris’ other series were slipping, he sold his company for a reported $100 million in 1980 and decided to go into films.
He directed and starred in The Gong Show, a thundering failure that stayed in theaters only a week.
Afterward, a distraught Barris checked into a New York hotel and wrote his autobiography, Confessions of a Dangerous Mind, in two months. In it, he claimed to have been a CIA assassin.
The book (and the 2002 film based on it, directed by George Clooney) were widely dismissed by disbelievers who said the creator of some of television’s most lowbrow game shows had allowed his imagination to run wild when he claimed to have spent his spare time traveling the world, quietly rubbing out enemies of the United States.
“It sounds like he has been standing too close to the gong all those years,” quipped CIA spokesman Tom Crispell. “Chuck Barris has never been employed by the CIA and the allegation that he was a hired assassin is absurd,” Crispell added.
Barris, who offered no corroboration of his claims, was unmoved.
“Have you ever heard the CIA acknowledge someone was an assassin?” he once asked.
Wrote a book
Seeking escape from the Hollywood rat race, he moved to a villa in the south of France in the 1980s with his girlfriend and future second wife, Robin Altman, and made only infrequent returns to his old haunts over the next two decades.
Back in the news in 2002 to help publicize “Confessions of a Dangerous Mind,” Barris said his shows were a forerunner to today’s popular reality TV series.
Born in Philadelphia in 1929, Charles Barris was left destitute, along with his sister and their mother, when his dentist father died of a stroke.
After graduating from the Drexel Institute of Technology in 1953, he took a series of jobs, including book salesman and fight promoter.
After being dropped from a low-level job at NBC, he found work at ABC, where he persuaded his bosses to let him open a Hollywood office, from which he launched his game-show empire. He also had success in the music world. He wrote the 1962 hit record Palisades Park, which was recorded by Freddy Cannon.
Barris’ first marriage, to Lynn Levy, ended in divorce. Their daughter, Della, died of a drug overdose in 1998. He married his third wife, Mary, in 2000.
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Report: Climate Outlook Improves as Fewer Coal Plants Built
Led by cutbacks in China and India, construction of new coal-fired power plants is falling worldwide, improving chances climate goals can be met despite earlier pessimism, three environmental groups said Wednesday.
A joint report by the groups CoalSwarm, the Sierra Club and Greenpeace follows a warning this week by two international agencies that the world needs to shift quickly away from fossil fuels to curb global warming. Environmentalists were dismayed by President Donald Trump’s U.S. government budget proposal last week that would cut spending on renewable energy.
Construction starts for coal-fired plants in China and India were down by 62 percent in January from a year earlier while new facilities starting operation declined 29 percent, according to the report. It said older plants in the United States and Europe are being retired at a record pace.
‘Global climate goals’
The latest developments “appear to have brought global climate goals within feasible reach, raising the prospect that the worst levels of climate change might be avoided,” said the report.
It acknowledged “the margin for error is tight” and said sustained progress will require China and India to scrap more than 100 coal plants on which construction has been suspended. And it warned that countries, including South Korea and Indonesia, are failing to develop renewables, which could increase their need for coal power.
In a separate report, the U.S.-based Institute for Energy Economics and Financial Analysis said falling power demand in Japan means most of the 45 new coal plants the country has planned will likely never be built.
The reports mark a shift in sentiment from six months ago, when environmentalists warned governments were doing too little to carry out the Paris climate accord. Signed by 170 countries, it calls for holding global temperature increases to no more than 2 degrees C (3.6 degrees F) in hopes of preventing sea level rise and other drastic change.
Biggest greenhouse gas emitter
China, the biggest greenhouse gas emitter, said at that time its coal use would rise until 2030. But later data showed the peak passed in 2013 and consumption is falling.
Countries including China, Germany, India and Japan are moving away from coal as alternatives get cheaper, said Tim Buckley, the IEEFA’s director of energy finance studies.
“I don’t think Trump can stop that,” he said.
Despite such changes, the amount of heat-trapping carbon dioxide in the atmosphere rose to a new high last year and is increasing, according to the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.
Asia alone is expected to account for 70 to 80 percent of the global growth in coal-fired power capacity over the next two decades.
Industry experts cautioned that countries including India, Indonesia, Bangladesh and Vietnam need to keep adding coal power because it is the only affordable option in a region where 500 million people lack access to electricity. The cost of solar and wind have fallen by up to 80 percent in some markets, but in places such as Bangladesh or parts of China it can still be double that of coal.
“We have to meet the basic needs of people while pushing for energy transition at the same time,” said Yongping Zhai, an adviser on energy to the Asian Development Bank. “You will need a mixture of different fuels. Coal will be there. You cannot avoid it.”
Canceled half its plans
China canceled half its planned additional coal-fired generating capacity over the past year but will still add 100 gigawatts by 2020, according to Xizhou Zhou, who heads the Asian gas and power practice for IHS Markit, a research firm. He said Asian countries are due to add 180 gigawatts out of a global total of 210 gigawatts.
“It’s true that we are seeing a slowdown in coal plant additions, but that doesn’t mean that demand will stop increasing or that they won’t need to build coal plants,” Zhou said.
In China, construction of power plants totaling more than 300 gigawatts was suspended following last year’s release of the latest five-year economic development plan, according to the CoalSwarm report.
On Saturday, Beijing’s last major coal-fired power plant was shut down under plans to switch the Chinese capital to gas and other power sources.
China’s power demand is cooling due to official efforts to reduce reliance on heavy industry and encourage services and technology, said Zhou. He said that might lead to higher demand in India or Southeast Asia if manufacturing of products such as smartphones that require glass, metal and other energy-intensive components migrates there.
“You have a lot of countries that could become a new manufacturing hub but still rely on coal-fired power,” he said.
No new coal-fired capacity
India’s government said in December it needed no new coal-fired capacity until at least 2027. But industry leaders expect work to resume on power projects that have been suspended.
Analysts also warn India is just setting out on a vast and energy-hungry process of building highways and other infrastructure, while China has completed that cycle.
“What happens in India is still an open question,” said Navroz Dubash of the Centre for Policy Research, a New Delhi think tank. “It’s important not to switch from the point of view that coal is inevitable to coal is unnecessary. I don’t think we’re there yet.”
In Japan, the amount of power generated from coal should fall by 40 percent from 2015 levels by 2030 due to lower demand and more use of alternative sources, the IEEFA report said.
“The economic arguments will win out,” said Paul Fisher, an economist at Cambridge University’s Institute for Sustainable Leadership. “Once the financial sector sees that it’s not in their interest to finance fossil fuels, we’ll get there.”
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How Schools Are Going Solar
The cost for individual homes in the U.S. to “go solar” has dropped by more than 60 percent over the last decade.
Those low costs helped convince more than a million Americans to install solar panels on their roofs.
Now schools are beginning to get in on the benefits. One of them is the school system in Fremont, Indiana.
The residents of this small town in America’s upper Midwest have always relied on the sun to warm their fields and draw tourists to their lakes. Now school superintendent William Stitt said they’re counting on it to power their schools.
“The technology has advanced so much in the last couple of years that it’s become more energy efficient, more cost effective for schools to get solar energy,” Stitt said.
Start-up cost
Construction of the solar project will cost $3 million. But when finished, it will completely power the elementary, middle and high school buildings. It may generate so much electricity, that the school will be able to sell some back to the power company at a profit.
The system will work through several rows of 3,000-4,000 panels each. They will be located in a special 2.5 hectare solar field behind the middle school.
The district has to lease the equipment from the local power company for 20 years, at a fixed rate.
But Kim Quick, facility director, said that even with that added cost, the schools should save money because the panels should last 40 years.
“[It] is going to cost us approximately the same amount we’re paying for utilities today. So that cost is never going to increase for the next 20 years,” Quick said. “So if the power company comes in next year and says, ‘We want to increase utilities 6 percent,’ we’re going to pay the same we’re paying today 20 years from now.”
Free electricity, eventually
In 20 years, the school district will own the equipment outright, meaning it won’t pay anything for electricity.
Since the panels are always “on,” Quick said the district will save additional money by banking the unused electricity that’s generated when school is not in session.
“These work year-round. Even in a full moon they will produce electricity,” he said.
Just 3 percent of the nation’s 125,000 schools use some form of solar energy. While not all can use solar power cost-effectively, a recent report by the Solar Foundation found that 72,000 US schools could save money with solar.
Schools could install panels on their roofs or elevate a field of panels over a parking lot. Those innovations would save most schools an average of $1 million over 30 years.
Educational component
Going solar also offers schools an educational component. It provides teachers opportunities to incorporate lessons in science, technology, engineering, and math into the curriculum.
All three schools in the Fremont system will have a live display module that kids can visit daily to learn how much energy is being used and saved.
If all goes according to plan, Fremont School District’s new solar field will be up and running by mid-summer. Superintendent Stitt is already looking further ahead.
“I’d love the community and the kids in 40 years to go, ‘Man, they made a great decision 40 years ago by creating this solar project!’ ” he said.
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How One US School is Going Solar
The cost for individual homes to go solar has dropped by more than 60 percent over the last decade. Those low costs helped convince more than a million private homes to install solar panels. Now schools are beginning to get in on the benefits. Erika Celeste reports from Fremont, Indiana.
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McCartney, Costello & the Album That Never Was
Paul McCartney’s “Flowers in the Dirt” box is as much an archeology project as a reissue, in which listeners can discover the bones of a landmark album that could have been made but wasn’t.
Two of the reissue’s three audio discs are devoted to McCartney’s songwriting collaboration with Elvis Costello in 1987 and 1988, which produced some 15 songs. Listening to the work, some of it first made available this week, it’s hard not to wonder why they didn’t make a duet album like Costello later did with Burt Bacharach. Instead, they decided not to alter their original plan.
The mythical disc could have started with “My Brave Face” and “Veronica,” two of each man’s biggest hits of the 1980s. And that was only the beginning.
“Looking back, you could say that,” McCartney told The Associated Press. “If we’d just done a few more of these demos, we could have made a crazy album. But we didn’t. That was as far as we got.”
McCartney initiated the partnership at the suggestion of his manager. The former Beatle was looking for varied sounds, styles and producers as he began work on a new album. McCartney and Costello worked for a few weeks in a room above McCartney’s studio in Sussex, England, where they’d write a song a day and immediately go downstairs to record it, sitting with acoustic guitars and singing together.
“There were many echoes, working with Elvis and working with John [Lennon], because I know Elvis is a big Beatles fan,” McCartney said. “He was a John fan, he wears glasses, he plays guitar right-handed.”
They’re all from Liverpool, too. McCartney worked with Costello as he did with Lennon, two men with acoustic guitars sitting across from one another. With McCartney left-handed, it felt to him like looking into a mirror.
“I think the key was not to turn up in short trousers with my Fan Club card sticking out of my top pocket,” Costello said. “I’d been asked to write songs in 1987, knowing what I know, having done what I’d done for that whole 10 years, which seemed like a long time then. Paul knows what he’s done and he knows I love him.
“That said, you’re bound to look up sometimes and think, ‘Bloody hell, it’s him!’,” he said.
In this week’s reissue, one disc contains nine of those 15 songs, recorded the day they were written. Another disc features the same songs produced by the two men later with a band added, primarily sung by McCartney since it was his album, after all.
To a certain extent, something is lost in translation.
Take the song “Tommy’s Coming Home,” for instance. Inspired fun with McCartney and Costello singing together, the tempo slows and the song drags in the full band version.
“I didn’t realize until looking back later that these demos had a special groove and a freshness and, I think on a few of the recorded versions, we lost some of that freshness,” McCartney said. “It gives an idea of the spontaneity of the writing. There’s a time that you regret that we didn’t just say, ‘This is it, this is good enough.’ Often when you don’t think you’re making the final record, you’re a bit looser … I think some of those performances are better than the ones on the record.”
The two-man recordings “have a lot of charm and a good deal of cheek,” Costello said. “You can almost hear us laughing at loud at what I call, ‘the Mersey cadences.’ It’s in the blood. It’s in the water. It’s in him and it’s got to come out.”
Since both are strong-willed men used to being in charge of their music, you’d have to wonder whether the easy creativity of the songwriting sessions would have lasted through the grunt work of making polished recordings. The two dismiss the suggestion that there would have been trouble, or that they would have needed another producer to referee. Costello said it wouldn’t have been as much fun as producing it themselves.
The songs they wrote were dispersed between the two men, or left on the shelf. Four were included on “Flowers in the Dirt,” including the stately “That Day is Done” and the call-and-response “You Want Her Too.” Costello later recorded “So Like Candy” and “Pads, Paws & Claws.” Some demos creeped out through the years.
“My Brave Face” could have been as big as anything he and Lennon had written, McCartney said. His pride in some of the songs he had written without Costello is one reason “Flowers in the Dirt” took shape the way it did. But you can hear another reason between the lines listening to him talk. Perhaps he didn’t want to pull Costello into the weight of comparisons that he felt for all of his post-Beatles career.
“Because John and I had such a successful collaboration and all the work we did was when we were young, often your first output like that can be your best,” he said. “I wouldn’t say it worries me, or I wouldn’t continue to write. But I do get the feeling that it would have been very hard to come up to the standards of the ones I wrote with John, like ‘It’s Getting Better’ or ‘She’s Leaving Home.”’
Costello, for his part, doesn’t look back with regret at the album that never was. He points to McCartney’s reissue.
“You could say, ‘this is it,”’ he said. “There’s a whole disc of me and Paul singing together. What can you say about that?”
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Barber-turned-rapper Crowned ‘Afghan Star’ in Talent Show
A barber-turned-rapper has been crowned the winner of an Afghan talent show that offered its audience some relief from daily stories of insurgents and suicide bombs.
Sayed Jamal Mubarez, from Afghanistan’s long-marginalized Hazara ethnic minority, won viewers over with lyrics capturing both the hope and despair of young people living through a war against Taliban militants now in its sixteenth year.
Afghan Star, modeled on singing contests popular across the world, is in its 12th season on Afghanistan’s biggest private television network, Tolo.
This year’s edition stood out after a woman — 18-year old singer Zulala Hashimi from the deeply conservative east of the country — reached the final for the first time, defying widespread attitudes against female performers.
But Mubarez emerged the winner later on Tuesday, looking every bit the budding rapper with his tilted red baseball cap and razor-trimmed beard.
“I am so happy. … I would have been happy if Zulala had won it because in Afghanistan women are living in a restricted situation,” the 23-year old said after accepting his award at a television studio housed behind wire-topped blast walls in Kabul’s diplomatic enclave.
The sole breadwinner at his home in the northern city of Mazar-i-Sharif, Mubarez said he discovered rap in Iran and spits lyrics while cutting hair.
The contest has been held inside a fortified compound for the last two series after the Taliban last year killed seven Tolo employees in a suicide attack on a staff minibus.
Newer musicians can struggle to make it big in Afghanistan, where the Taliban once banned music and many disapprove of Western-style popular culture, and artists often seek the safety and freedom of a life abroad.
Mubarez told Reuters he intends to turn professional if he can find financial support, and would otherwise return to his barber shop while rapping on the side.
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Google Adds ‘Shortcuts’ to Information, Tools on Smartphones
Google wants to make it easier for you to find answers and recommendations on smartphones without having to think about what to ask its search engine.
Its new feature, called “shortcuts,” will appear as a row of icons below the Google search box. Where now you’d have to ponder and then speak or type a request, the shortcuts will let you tap the icons to get the latest weather, movie times, sports scores, restaurant recommendations and other common requests.
The shortcuts will begin appearing Tuesday in updates to Google’s app for iPhones, Android phones and its mobile website. The Android app will also include various tools such as a currency converter, a language translator and an ATM locator, which you can also summon with a tap. Those tools may eventually make it to the iPhone as well, although Google says it doesn’t know when.
These shortcuts are the latest step in Google’s quest to turn its search engine into a secondary brain that anticipates people’s needs and desires. The search engine gleans these insights by analyzing your past requests and, when you allow it, tracking your location, a practice that periodically raises privacy concerns about Google’s power to create digital profiles of its users.
Based on the knowledge that Google already has accumulated, its shortcuts feature may already list your favorite sports teams or recommend nearby restaurants serving cuisines you prefer.
Adapting to audience
Shortcuts also show how Google’s search engine has been adapting to its audience, now that smartphones have become the primary way millions of people stay connected to the internet.
Since more than half of requests for Google’s search engine now come from smartphones, the Mountain View, California, company has adapted its services to smaller screens, touch keyboards and apps instead of websites.
Early in that process, Google tweaked its search engine to answer many requests with factual summaries at the top of its results page, a change from simply displaying a list of links to other websites. Voice-recognition technology also allows you to speak your request into a phone instead of typing it.
The transition is going well so far. Google’s revenue rose 20 percent last year to $89 billion, propelled by digital ads served up on its search engine, YouTube and Gmail. Although shortcuts won’t initially show ads after you tap them, Google typically sells marketing space if a feature or service becomes popular.
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Good Dog! Lab Stays Atop List of America’s Favorite Pooches
The friendly Labrador retriever has retained its long-held title as the most popular dog breed in the United States, while the fearless Rottweiler has climbed to its highest ranking in 20 years.
The nation’s most sought after dogs of 2016 were unveiled in New York City on Tuesday by the American Kennel Club, a purebred dog registry that releases a list of top dog breeds each year.
Labs have held their slot as the most popular breed for each of the past 26 years, making them the longest-reigning leader of the pack.
“Labs, they’re just great with people. They’re great with everyone,” said Theresa Viesto, who breeds Labs in Newtown, Connecticut, and is registered with the club. “You never hear about a Lab getting into a dogfight.”
Viesto and her 4-year-old yellow Lab, Reggie, attended the news conference alongside a roomful of stretching, scratching and wrestling dogs and puppies representing the top 10 breeds.
Placing second, third and fourth were the German shepherd, golden retriever and bulldog, respectively. Beagles were fifth most popular, while French bulldogs placed sixth. The top six breeds remained the same as in 2015.
Poodles were seventh and Rottweilers eighth, each jumping one spot higher than the last lineup. Yorkshire terriers dropped two spots to place ninth and boxers held firm in the 10th spot.
While the most popular list is generally a reshuffling of longtime top breeds, Rottweilers have seen a resurgence in popularity recently after falling out of favor in the late 1990s, said Gina DiNardo, AKC vice president.
It was not clear why Rottweilers were making a comeback — the last time the breed placed at its current level was in 1997 — but a strong economy generally prompts people to seek bigger and costlier dogs, including Rottweilers, DiNardo said.
Rottweiler owner Alexandra Niles, from Scotch Plains, New Jersey, said it was the breed’s devoted nature that won her heart. “They’ll pretty much do anything for you,” said Niles, with her hefty 4-year-old Rottweiler, Talos, sprawled out on the floor next to her.
“He never leaves my side,” Niles said about her companion, adding that he enjoys swimming and “doesn’t mind” being dressed up in costumes.
The American Kennel Club maintains the country’s largest registry of purebred dogs. Once a breed is added to the list of some 200 breeds and varietals currently recognized by the club, it is eligible to compete in the prestigious Westminster Kennel Club Dog Show.
Westminster has never selected a Labrador retriever as winner in the show’s 141-year history. “Hopefully, someday they will be,” DiNardo said.
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Satellite Navigation Systems Lead Users to Shut Off Parts of Brain
If you have long feared that using a satellite navigation system to get to your destination is making you worse at finding the way alone, research now suggests your concern may be justified.
Scientists studying what navigation systems do to the brain have found that people using them effectively switch off parts of the brain that would otherwise be utilized to simulate different routes and boost navigational skills.
Publishing the findings in the journal Nature Communications on Tuesday, the researchers said that when volunteers in an experiment navigated manually, their hippocampus and prefrontal cortex brain regions had spikes of activity. But these were not seen when the volunteers simply followed satellite navigation devices’ instructions.
“When we have technology telling us which way to go … these parts of the brain simply don’t respond to the street network,” said Hugo Spiers of University College London’s (UCL) department of experimental psychology. “In that sense, our brain has switched off its interest in the streets around us.”
Long-term effects
The researchers said constant use of navigation systems would probably have longer-term limiting effects, making users less able to learn and navigate a city’s street network unaided.
“Understanding how the environment affects our brain is important,” said Amir-Homayoun Javadi, who worked on the UCL study before moving to the University of Kent. Satellite systems “clearly have their uses and their limitations.”
As an extension of the research, the scientists also analyzed the street networks of major cities around the world to visualize how easy they may be to navigate.
London, with its complex network of small streets, appears to be particularly taxing on the hippocampus, they said.
By contrast, far less mental effort may be needed to navigate Manhattan in New York, where a grid layout means that at most junctions, the choice is only between straight, left or right.
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Apple Cuts Prices on Lower-End iPads, Releases Red iPhones
Apple is cutting prices on two iPad models and introducing red iPhones, but the company held back on updating its higher-end iPad Pro tablets.
A much-speculated 10.5-inch iPad Pro didn’t materialize, nor did new versions of existing sizes in the Pro lineup, which is aimed at businesses and creative professionals. The new devices are mostly refreshes of existing models. Apple unveiled them through press releases Tuesday rather than a staged event, as it typically does for bigger product releases.
The iPad updates come as the tablet market continues to decline, after a few years of rapid growth. According to IDC, tablet shipments fell 20 percent to 53 million worldwide in the final three months of 2016, compared with the same period in 2015.
The new lineup
The iPad Air 2 is replaced by a new model simply called the iPad. It retains a 9.7-inch screen, but gains a little weight and thickness. The display is brighter and the processor faster. Its price starts at $329 for 32 gigabytes of storage, down from $399. The standard-size iPad is now cheaper than the smaller Mini model.
The 7.9-inch iPad Mini 4 now comes with 128 gigabytes of storage starting at $399, rather than $499 before. Apple is eliminating the 32-gigabyte model, which used to sell for $399. Nothing else is changing.
Apple is also releasing a red edition of the iPhone 7 and 7 Plus; for each phone sold, Apple is donating an unspecified amount to HIV and AIDS programs. And Apple is doubling the storage on the smaller iPhone SE while keeping the $399 starting price.
The new iPad Mini 4 is available right away, while the standard-size iPad comes out next week, with orders to begin Friday. The new iPhone SE comes out Friday, while the red iPhones are expected by the end of the month, with advance orders beginning Friday.
The missing device
IDC analyst Jorge Vela had high hopes for a 10.5-inch iPad. He said such a size might have offered room for a better keyboard, compared with the 9.7-inch iPad Pro, and it wouldn’t have been as bulky as the 12.9-inch version.
And Apple typically sparks consumer interest when it has new sizes and designs, Vela said, as seen by a jump in sales following the introduction of larger iPhones in 2014 (iPhone sales have since dropped.) Vela said a 10.5-inch version might have been enough for existing iPad owners to upgrade.
A 10.5-inch version may still come this year, closer to the holiday shopping season, along with updates to existing Pro sizes.
Jackdaw Research analyst Jan Dawson said Tuesday’s announcement makes it “even clearer that there are two very distinct iPad tiers now — the iPad Pro and the basic iPads. The iPad Pros will likely continue to get all the best new features, while the basic iPad will get occasional updates and new features a little later than the Pros, lagging a generation or two behind.”
The processor in the new standard-size iPad, for instance, is akin to what’s in the iPhone 6S from 2015. The Mini’s processor is even older.
Down, but not out
In the last three months of 2016, iPhones generated 10 times the revenue as iPads. Unit sales of iPads fell 19 percent from the previous year. Yet Apple CEO Tim Cook has expressed optimism because many people were buying iPads for the first time, indicating that the market had yet to reach saturation, the point at which everyone who wants a particular product already has one.
Dawson agrees that the number of tablet owners is still growing, even if overall sales are declining because people aren’t upgrading often. He said the new $329 price for the 9.7-inch iPad should help spur sales. New 9.7-inch models have previously cost at least $499.
Far from holding a clearance sale, Vela said Apple is merely taking advantage of lower prices for older components. And Apple might be able to preserve higher profit margins by pushing people into a model with four times the storage, or 128 gigabytes; the extra storage costs Apple far less than the extra $100 that model sells for, Vela said.
Challengers
Apple remains the market leader, accounting for about a quarter of all tablets shipped in the fourth quarter, according to IDC.
Samsung beat Apple to a tablet announcement by nearly a month, though Samsung’s Android-based Galaxy Tab S3 doesn’t actually start selling until this Friday, for $600.
Vela doesn’t consider it a serious threat to Apple. Even though the Tab S3 is more in line with iPad Pros in quality, Vela said people tend to buy Samsung tablets as media-consumption devices, something they can do with the cheaper iPads.
Samsung also has two Windows 10 tablets coming. Called the Galaxy Book, the Windows devices are more likely to challenge Microsoft’s Surface than iPads. Microsoft is due for a refresh of its Surface Pro tablet, last updated in October 2015.
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LA Sheriff’s Office Apologizes to Wyclef Jean for Handcuffing Incident
Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department apologized on Tuesday for briefly detaining Grammy-winning hip hop artist Wyclef Jean in handcuffs during a robbery investigation, after Jean said he was “treated like a criminal” by law enforcement officers.
The sheriff’s department released a statement describing its investigation in the early hours of Monday morning into a violent robbery in West Hollywood, a trendy municipality neighboring Los Angeles, and apologized “for any inconvenience this process caused Mr. Jean.”
“It is unfortunate that Mr. Jean was detained for six minutes during this investigation, as he had no involvement whatsoever in this violent crime,” the sheriff’s department said.
Representatives for Jean did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
The sheriff’s department said the suspects allegedly attacked and held up a man and a woman at gunpoint and robbed them of their possessions before driving away. Jean was pulled over shortly after the incident because the vehicle he was in matched the description of the suspects’ car.
The statement said Jean was placed in handcuffs because he displayed “furtive movements and demeanor,” such as walking towards the trunk of the car despite deputies asking him not to.
The suspects in the robbery were later arrested.
In tweets and video of the incident posted to his Instagram and Twitter feed, Jean, the Haitian-born former Fugees singer, said he appeared to have been the victim of “another case of mistaken identity” and threatened to sue.
“I was treated like a criminal until other police showed up and pointed out they had wrong person,” Jean, 47, wrote on Twitter.
“I am sure no father wants his sons or daughters to see him in Handcuffs especially if he is innocent,” he added.
Jean emigrated to the United States from Haiti at the age of 9 but has maintained his Haitian citizenship.
Tuesday’s incident comes amid heightened sensitivity about racial issues and the U.S. justice system following a spate of shootings by police of unarmed black people.
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Rusty Patched Bumblebee First of Species Called Endangered
The rusty patched bumblebee on Tuesday became the first officially endangered bee species in the continental U.S., overcoming objections from some business interests and a last-minute delay ordered by the Trump administration.
One of many bee types that have suffered steep population declines, the rusty patched has disappeared from about 90 percent of its range in the past 20 years. It previously was common across the East Coast and much of the Midwest, where it played a crucial role as a pollinator of crops and wild plants.
Its listing as an endangered species means the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service will devise a plan for returning the imperiled bee to “a healthy and secure condition,” the U.S. Department of Interior said. “We will work with stakeholders to ensure collaborative conservation among landowners, farmers, industry, and developers in the areas where the species is native.”
The Xerces Society for Invertebrate Conservation, which filed the petition that triggered the government’s consideration of the matter, said it was “thrilled to see one of North America’s most endangered species receive the protection it needs.”
“Now that the Fish and Wildlife Service has listed the rusty patched bumblebee as endangered, it stands a chance of surviving the many threats it faces,” said Sarina Jepsen, the group’s director of endangered species.
Threats
Scientists say disease, pesticide exposure, habitat loss and climate change are among possible reasons for the decline of the bee, named for the rusty reddish patch on the backs of workers and males. Most of the grasslands and tallgrass prairies where they once thrived have been converted to farms or urban areas.
Advocates said they hoped the recovery plan would also help other struggling pollinators, including bees and the monarch butterfly.
The bee’s endangered listing, approved by the service shortly before President Barack Obama left office, had been scheduled to take effect Feb. 10. But the Trump administration, which has pledged to pare back federal regulations, said it would postpone the listing until Tuesday. Some environmental groups had feared it would be canceled altogether.
The Natural Resources Defense Council filed a lawsuit over the delay, saying it had been ordered without required public notice and comment. On Tuesday, the group said the administration had “reversed course and listed the rusty patched bumblebee as an endangered species just in the nick of time.”
“Federal protections may be the only thing standing between the bumblebee and extinction,” said Rebecca Riley, senior attorney with the group.
Industry groups
Six business organizations petitioned the government earlier this month to push back the effective date to Jan. 11, 2018. The groups, including the American Petroleum Institute and the National Association of Home Builders, said the Obama administration had acted hastily without adequately considering how the designation would affect human activities.
“Once the listing decision takes effect, virtually every industry operating within the species’ range — from agriculture and crop production to residential and commercial development, from energy production and distribution to manufacturing — will be profoundly affected,” the petition said.
Too little is known about the bee’s underground nesting and hibernation sites for developers to determine whether their work would do harm, the industry groups said. That may force businesses to choose between “abandoning billions of dollars in economic activities” or “blindly risking” a violation of the Endangered Species Act by going ahead with their projects, the groups said.
The Fish and Wildlife Service posted information on its website about how to determine whether an area being considered for development is likely to host rusty patched bumblebees and ways to meet legal requirements for protecting them.
The law prohibits killing, harassing or otherwise harming listed animals, although people can obtain permits that excuse limited “takings” of endangered species as a result of doing things that otherwise are legal.
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Put Rainfall, Air Conditioning Back Into Trees, Scientists Say
International climate and environment agreements have a flaw which may jeopardize attempts to curb global warming quickly: they do not highlight the role trees play in creating rainfall and cooling the earth’s surface, 22 scientists said on Tuesday.
Traditionally, international agreements have focused on how trees affect carbon levels in the atmosphere — living trees absorb carbon dioxide and deforestation releases carbon.
While that is important, it should not be the priority, the scientists said, while presenting results of their research at a virtual forestry symposium.
Tree help with formation of clouds
Trees bring moisture to the air, and release chemicals that can lead to the formation of clouds, Meine van Noordwijk, chief science advisor at the World Agroforestry Center, told the Thomson Reuters Foundation.
Considering only their carbon storage “means we miss a huge opportunity,” van Noordwijk said, particularly as more erratic rainfall brings droughts and other problems around the world.
Countries are under pressure to curb emissions fast enough to keep global temperature rise to well below 2 degrees Celsius, as agreed under the 2015 Paris Agreement on climate change.
But viewing trees as carbon stores alone is not enough to mobilize governments and the public to ramp up forest protection or grow more trees as fast as they need to, they said.
More shade needed in cities
The group of scientists called for a “significant revision” of national and regional strategies to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and adapt to climate change.
This includes planting more trees in cities, creating shade that naturally cools areas so people can spend less money and energy on air conditioning, the scientists said.
“The energy saving that can come from having the air conditioning of trees is gradually becoming better known,” van Noordwijk said, adding that some cities have begun recognizing the role trees can play.
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This Week in History: Obamacare Clears Final Legal Hurdle in 2010
“This legislation will not fix everything that ails our health care system, but it moves us decisively in the right direction.”
Those were the words of then-President Barack Obama just after the U.S. House of Representatives voted 219-212 to overhaul the nation’s health care system seven years ago this week.
“This is what change looks like,” Obama added.
From President Harry Truman in 1948 to President Bill Clinton in 1993, making healthcare affordable to all Americans had been a struggle. Efforts to reform the complex, patchwork health care system, marked by skyrocketing costs and unaffordable insurance premiums, failed.
The Affordable Care Act (ACA), widely known as “Obamacare,” was designed to grant access to health care to millions of uninsured Americans.
Reform meant cobbling together the interests of politicians, for-profit hospitals, medical professionals, insurance and pharmaceutical companies — not to mention ordinary Americans.
Obama staked his first term in office on health care reform; it became his signature issue shortly after taking office in 2009.
From the start, the backlash was immediate. After winning passage of the bill — without a single Republican vote — then House minority leader John Boehner warned, “If we pass this bill, there will be no turning back….It will be the last straw for the American people.”
Opposition to Obamacare also prompted this nasty outburst during a joint address before Congress in September 2009.
South Carolina Republican Joe Wilson accusation “You lie!” was unprecedented. Wilson later apologized, but received a formal reprimand by his colleagues in the House nonetheless.
That vehement opposition to the ACAwould come back to haunt the White House in 2016, when business mogul and then-presidential candidate Donald Trump made the repeal of Obamacare a key part of his platform.
Individual mandate
Among the most controversial parts of the former president’s bill was a measure that penalized Americans who did not buy into a so-called online health care exchange to buy insurance.
Here’s how the Obama administration explained it on its own ACA website:
“If you can afford health insurance but choose not to buy it, you must pay a fee called the individual shared responsibility payment. (The fee is sometimes called the “penalty,” “fine,” or “individual mandate.”)”
One of the main promises of the bill, which did not go into effect until 2014, was affordable insurance premiums. Under Obamacare, adult children are allowed to stay on their parents’ health insurance plans until the age of 26, and insurance companies are barred from refusing to cover people with “pre-existing conditions.”
But the reality of the cost of Obamacare ended up being far less simple than that — and political opposition grew as some people who signed up for Obamacare found their premiums were far more expensive than expected.
Once in place, it also was unclear as to exactly how many Americans who previously were not covered now had insurance because of the ACA.
Estimates on the number of Americans who remained uninsured after Obamacare went into effect ranged from 20 million to more than 31 million, depending on who was calculating and how.
The website Obamacare Facts, run by Media Solutions, an independent group that claims to have no ties to any political party, states the following:
“The ACA has increasingly reduced the uninsured rate each year, 20 million plus is a good current answer to how many are covered between all coverage provisions. The specifics change based on what report we are discussing, what methodology they are using, and what demographics are being considered.”
Uphill task of repeal
President Trump has stood by his promise to roll back Obamacare, calling the legislation “a mess.”
Even before his swearing-in back in January, Trump acknowledged the difficulty of doing so, and even said he is considering keeping parts of the ACA intact, in an exclusive interview with The Wall Street Journal.
Trump made the same policy shift during an appearance on CBS’ “60 Minutes,” which aired three days after the November election.
Obamacare is still in effect.
But, earlier this month, Republicans introduced its replacement: the American Health Care Act, and after sharp criticism from some conservatives, have offered modifications.
Still, most experts agree the president and the Republican Party are going to make changes — perhaps little by little, and not in one sweeping legislative gesture, as predicted by former Republican House Speaker and Trump adviser Newt Gingrich.
“I think this bill has to be seen as the first of three or four bills and, therefore, it will not satisfy someone who wants a full blown repeal,” Gingrich said during an interview on The New York Times’ “The Daily” podcast.
“But to get something thru [sic] the Senate with 52 senators, I think you have to write a narrower bill, and try to come back this fall and write a bill that can get 60 votes.”
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Twitter Cracks Down on Terrorism-related Accounts
Twitter suspended more than 376,000 accounts in the second half of 2016, most of which it said were promoting terrorism.
Most of the accounts, 74 percent, were removed by proprietary software, the company said in its latest transparency report. The software reportedly determines a terrorism related account through how it behaves, rather than what it posts, saying the accounts have “distinctive behavior.”
Two percent of the accounts were suspended by various government requests, according to Twitter.
The number of suspensions is three times more than the social media site deleted in the last half of 2015.
In total, the company says it suspended 636,280 accounts from August 1, 2015 to December 31, 2016.
The report comes as Facebook and Google are wrestling with how to prevent objectionable content from their sites.
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Trump Signs NASA Funding Bill
U.S. President Donald Trump has signed into law a bill that increases the budget of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), maintains the agency’s earth science program and adds human exploration of Mars as a goal.
The measure increases NASA’s budget to $19.5 billion. Trump’s initial budget proposal submitted to Congress last week allocated $19.1 billion, a modest decrease from the current spending level.
Trump said the law will reinforce NASA’s core mission of human space exploration while continuing to transition activities to private aerospace companies. “I hope they will pay us a lot of money,” Trump said in an Oval Office signing ceremony attended by a bipartisan group of lawmakers.
The measure also directs the agency to develop programs to get a “crewed mission to Mars in the 2030’s” and explore the “potential for human habitation on another celestial body” in the 21st century.
A manned mission to Mars had been widely viewed as NASA’s next great challenge. The agency is expected to develop new technology to achieve the mission by relying heavily on private aviation companies.
SpaceX, owned by Elon Musk, is scheduled to launch an unmanned spaceship to Mars as soon as 2018.
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Taxi-Hailing App ‘Grab’ Beats Uber to Myanmar
A Singapore-based ride-hailing service launched a trial in Myanmar’s biggest city Tuesday, making it the first international company to operate there.
“Grab,” a company that currently operates in six other countries in Southeast Asia, would rival a number of local ride-hailing services already operating in Yangon, but beats global giant Uber, which said in a separate statement the same day that it planned a launch in the city “very soon.”
A small group of taxi drivers would conduct the trial run in Yangon and increase in scale gradually, Grab said in a statement.
The introduction of international ride-hailing apps comes as the government is making major changes to public transport options, especially commuter buses, and as the number of cars in the country increases.
There are currently more than 400,000 registered vehicles in Myanmar, the majority of them in Yangon, according to automotive consulting firm Solidiance.
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Stolen Van Gogh Paintings Return to Amsterdam Museum
The Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam welcomed home two paintings by the Dutch master Tuesday, more than 14 years after they were ripped off the museum’s wall in a nighttime heist.
“They’re back,” said museum director Axel Rueger. He called their return one of the “most special days in the history of our museum.”
The paintings, the 1882 “View of the Sea at Scheveningen,” and 1884-85 work “Congregation leaving the Reformed Church in Nuenen,” were discovered last year by Italian police investigating suspected Italian mobsters for cocaine trafficking.
It wasn’t an easy find. The two paintings were wrapped in cotton sheets, stuffed in a box and hidden behind a wall in a toilet, said Gen. Gianluigi D’Alfonso of the Italian financial police, who was on hand at the museum to watch the ceremonial unveiling.
They were found in a farmhouse near Naples as Italian police seized some 20 million euros worth of assets, including villas, apartments and even a small airplane. Investigators contend the assets are linked to two Camorra drug kingpins, Mario Cerrone and Raffaele Imperiale.
“After years shrouded in darkness, they can now shine again,” Dutch Minister for Education, Culture and Science Jet Bussemaker said as an orange screen slid away to reveal the two paintings behind a glass wall.
Italy’s Interior Minister Angelino Alfano said last year the paintings were “considered among the artworks most searched for in the world, on the FBI’s list of the Top 10 art crimes.”
They are now back on display at the museum before being taken to its conservation studio for repair, although they suffered remarkably little damage as thieves who had clambered up a ladder and smashed a window to get into the museum in 2002 ripped them out of their frames and fled.
“It is not only a miracle that the works have been recovered but it’s even more miraculous almost that they are in relatively unharmed condition,” Rueger said.
The museum director was on vacation when the call came last year from Italian authorities who believed they had recovered the paintings. He didn’t celebrate right away; he’d had calls like this before.
“I was hopeful but also a little hesitant because over the course of the years we had multiple occasions when people phoned us, contacted us, claiming that they knew something about the whereabouts of the works and each time it was false, the trace went cold,” he said. “So … the way has been peppered with disappointment.”
But museum experts dispatched to Italy to check the authenticity of the works quickly turned Rueger’s doubts into delight.
“It was something we had secretly been hoping for for all those years,” he said.
The two small works are not typical of Van Gogh’s later and better-known works, but are still vital pieces for the museum’s collection, Rueger said.
The Scheveningen seascape, with a fishing boat and rough sea under a typically gray, cloudy Dutch sky, is one of Van Gogh’s earliest works and the only painting in the museum’s collection painted during his time in The Hague. It suffered a missing rectangular chip from the bottom left-hand corner.
The painting of the church in Nuenen portrayed the village where his parents lived.
“He had painted as a gift to his mother, so it’s a very personal and emotional connection,” Rueger said.
Rueger said the paintings are now back for good at a museum which is home to dozens of works by Van Gogh, whose paintings fetch millions of dollars on the rare occasions they come up for auction.
“The security, I can assure you, is of Triple-A quality now so I’m very confident that everything is safe in the museum,” he said.
your ad hereCherry Blossoms Herald Spring’s Arrival in Japan
Japan’s cherry blossom season kicked off on Tuesday, when the Japanese Meteorological Agency confirmed the flowers were in bloom in Tokyo.
Despite the drizzling rain, agency officials counted more than five flowers blooming on a sample tree at Tokyo’s Yasukuni Shrine, and confirmed that the cherry blossom could therefore be considered in bloom.
Visitors were busy taking photos of the cherry blossom flowers, but trees were still looking rather bare.
The beginning of the cherry blossom season in Tokyo came before anywhere else in Japan, and about five days before the average date.
The flower tends to first bloom in southern Japan, where the climate is warmer.
The flowers are expected to reach full bloom in about a week.
your ad hereGeorge Clooney Pays Surprise Visit to Devoted UK Fan
Actor George Clooney has startled an 87-year-old fan in Britain by showing up at her assisted living facility with flowers and a card to wish her a happy birthday.
The 55-year-old popped in for a chat and a picture with admirer Pat Adams on Sunday at the Sunrise of Sonning Retirement and Assisted Living Facility in Reading. Linda Jones, a worker there, posted a picture of herself and the beaming pair on Facebook.
Jones wrote: “The lady in the picture, loves George Clooney and mentions everyday how she would love him to meet him, especially as he lives so near to where I work.”
A letter was sent to Clooney asking if he could make a “dream to come true.”
Clooney owns a home near the facility in Berkshire.
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