Academy award-winning filmmaker Danny Boyle reunites with his original Trainspotting cast 20 years later to make a sequel that deals with aging, accountability, friendship and once again, betrayal.

Those who saw the original film remember four friends in their twenties. They are up to no good, living on the fringes, immersed in drug culture and pulling a heist. Their exuberant youth and reckless lifestyle captured the popular culture of the 90s.

Trainspotting became a cult movie and few could believe that a sequel could measure up. Yet, Danny Boyle’s Trainspotting 2 becomes a worthy companion to the original.

As in all Danny Boyle films, Trainspotting 2 takes us on a wild ride from its first frame. The camera focuses on treadmills at a gym and on a seemingly fit Mark Renton, running on one full speed when suddenly he falls off with a bang. He’s just had a heart attack. With this jolting introduction, Boyle reunites the cast from the original Trainspotting, which became a cult film in the 90s.

In this sequel, 20 years have gone by since Renton betrayed his gang after their heist in London, running away with the money. Now Renton, a broken man with a broken marriage, returns from Amsterdam to Scotland and to his ‘frenemies,’ seeking redemption. “He’s had a heart attack and he’s come back. These are the only people that really know him that he knows. And I suppose it’s a midlife crisis of sorts or a life crisis of sorts,” says Ewan McGregor, who played Mark Renton in 1996 and rose to stardom when the original Trainspotting became such a hit. The movie was a landmark in the lives of each of the cast members, but also for the filmmaker who — despite his wide-ranging success — reserves a special spot in his heart for this film.

In a way, Trainspotting 2 is Danny Boyle’s return to a familial place dealing with his own existential crisis. The filmmaker tells VOA he didn’t want to make just another sequel. He wanted a companion piece reflecting on the life of these aging men, who failed to amount to much in life and stubbornly cling to a youth that is not there.

“I think we were all conscious returning to it. How much a huge part it played in our individual careers. It gave us a life into the world which was surprising! We set the film to resemble the first film, everybody was paid the same, there wasn’t huge amounts of money, we didn’t treat it as a cash cow, we were not cashing in on our successful original, and we also wanted to surprise people with what the film has to say,” says the Oscar-winning filmmaker.

The reunion is dramatic. Simon, played by Jonny Lee Miller, schemes revenge, and Begbie, the most feral of them all, played by Robert Carlyle, recently escaped from prison and has vowed to kill Mark Renton. But the most redeeming character is Spud, played by Ewen Bremner. The hopeless addict, stuck in an endless loop of addiction and rehab, attempts suicide but is saved by Mark Renton.

“There are scenes in it which we benefited from addicts who told us that ‘you can’t really eradicate addiction,’ what they do in modern treatment is replace it with another obsession, an alternative obsession which is often sports. But in Spud’s case, it’s actually this writing and it was certainly true in Irvine Welsh’s case, the original writer. So, the film becomes ironically full of hope by the end,” says Boyle.

Spud goes on to write the original story of Trainspotting. Boyle says he wants to create this loop between the two films, showing that despite our aging process, our outlook to life is not linear. Like any other Danny Boyle film, Trainspotting 2 offers exuberant music, electrifying visuals, brutal scenes and yet its success lies in the honesty and tenderness with which the filmmaker and screenwriter John Hodge treat the aging characters.

“If you’re gonna do a sequel, a 20 years later sequel, the actors are not going to be able to hide from that. You’re gonna feel it in every frame of the film. It’s gonna be the protein of the film. And so, it’s a more confessional film, although there is a lot of the film that enjoys some of the pleasures that you get from the first film,” says Boyle.

Whether it appeals to the nostalgia of the older fans or the fast sensibilities of younger ones, Trainspotting 2 is slated to be another Danny Boyle success.
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From: MeNeedIt

U.S. Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin said on Friday he believes financial markets could improve “significantly” once they fully reflect the potential for U.S. economic growth from President Donald Trump’s economic policies.

Mnuchin said at an event sponsored by news website Axios that optimism about U.S. growth from policies such as regulatory reform and tax reform is “definitely not all baked in” to market valuations.

U.S. stock prices and the dollar have strengthened significantly since Trump was elected in November, largely in anticipation of corporate profits rising as regulatory burdens ease and tax rates fall. Some of those gains were retraced this week as Republicans in Congress faced stiff opposition from

conservatives in passing a bill to replace the Obamacare health law.

“I think there is some good news that’s baked in, but yet, I think there is further room for significant growth in the economy that would be reflected in the markets,” Mnuchin said. “The consequence would be that the market could go up significantly,” Mnuchin added.

Treasury secretaries in the past have shied away from publicly discussing market valuations.

But Mnuchin said Trump’s policies could produce growth of 3 percent to 3.5 percent, which is significantly higher than the fourth quarter reading of 1.9 percent.

“We’re in an environment where the U.S. assets are the most attractive assets to invest in on a global basis.”

Mnuchin said he is still aiming to achieve passage of comprehensive tax reform by the time Congress takes its August recess. He also said he expects the Trump administration’s Obamacare replacement bill to pass later on Friday.
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From: MeNeedIt

Bob Dylan’s new album “Triplicate” explores American standards from the 1930s, ’40s, and ’50s, but the veteran singer-songwriter says that does not mean he is yearning for the past.

Dylan also is unconcerned whether his fans like the album — the third in as many years that features cover versions of classic songs like “Stormy Weather,” “As Time Goes By” and “Stardust.”

“These songs are some of the most heartbreaking stuff ever put on record and I wanted to do them justice. Now that I have lived them and lived through them, I understand them better,” Dylan, 75, told music writer Bill Flanagan in a rare interview.

“It’s not taking a trip down memory lane or longing or yearning for the good old days or fond memories of what’s no more,” he added in the lengthy Q&A, posted on the bobdylan.com website on Wednesday.

The three-disc album “Triplicate” will be released on March 31. It follows 2015’s “Shadows in the Night” album of Frank Sinatra covers and 2016’s similar “Fallen Angels” in marking a strong contrast from the early, socially conscious folk and rock compositions for which Dylan remains most famous.

Songs ‘for man on the street’

Asked what his fans might think of the cover albums, Dylan said: “These songs are meant for the man on the street, the common man, the everyday person. Maybe that is a Bob Dylan fan, maybe not, I don’t know.”

In the wide-ranging interview, Dylan also touched on his admiration for the late Amy Winehouse, calling her “the last real individualist around”; his and George Harrison’s abortive bid years ago to record with Elvis Presley (“he [Elvis] did show up; it was us that didn’t”); and the power of early rock ‘n’ roll music, (“Rock ‘n’ roll was a dangerous weapon, chrome-plated, it exploded like the speed of light, it reflected the times, and especially the presence of the atomic bomb, which had preceded it by several years.”)

Cohen, Russell, Haggard missed 

Dylan also spoke of the loss of fellow musicians like Leonard Cohen, Leon Russell and Merle Haggard, all of whom died last year.

“We were like brothers, we lived on the same street and they all left empty spaces where they used to stand. It’s lonesome without them,” he said.

No mention was made of Dylan’s Nobel Prize for literature, and his nonattendance at the annual Nobel award ceremony in Sweden. Dylan is due to perform in Sweden next week as part of a European tour.
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From: MeNeedIt

A new vaccine against rotavirus, a diarrheal disease that kills about 600 children a day, has been shown to have almost 67 percent efficacy in preventing the illness.

“This efficacy of about 70 percent is higher than any other vaccine in similar settings,” said Dr. Emmanuel Baron, director of Epicentre, the research arm of Doctors Without Borders, which conducted the trial.

A clinical trial of 3,500 infants in the African country of Niger showed the efficacy of the new vaccine, known as BRV-PV, to be 66.7 percent. Thirty-one cases of rotavirus were reported among children who got the vaccine, compared with 87 cases among those who received a placebo.

Details of the study and the vaccine’s effectiveness were published in the New England Journal of Medicine.

“We saw actually three things,” Baron said. “The first is that this vaccine is efficient. The second is that this vaccine is safe. And we also saw a good acceptability by the care providers and the families.”

An estimated 450,000 young children and babies die each year of diarrheal diseases. One of them is rotavirus, which causes a severe infection of the gastrointestinal tract. 

Experts say rotavirus is responsible for about 37 percent of deaths among children younger than 5 who succumb to diarrheal diseases each year, or about 215,000 deaths annually.

There are two existing vaccines, but Baron said they are not widely used, as they are relatively expensive and must be refrigerated. Refrigeration is an obstacle in many African countries where rotavirus is most pronounced because electricity there is unreliable.

Even when children are immunized with the older vaccines, Baron says, hundreds die each day around the world.

The new vaccine does not need refrigeration for up to six months, because it is mixed or reconstituted with liquid before it is given to children in a three-dose schedule, at 6, 10 and 14 weeks of age. 

Initially, the BRV-PV is expected to cost $6 dollars for the three shots, a price that is expected to drop as the vaccine gains traction.

Baron said clinicians in countries where rotavirus is a serious health threat are waiting for the green light from the World Health Organization to begin immunizing children with the new vaccine.
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From: MeNeedIt

We’re unlocking the five most popular songs in the Billboard Hot 100 Pop Singles chart, for the week ending March 25, 2017.

The hit list continues to be in a generous mood, bestowing upon us another new song. It happens in fifth place where Ri-Ri is a chart-buster all around.

Number 5: Rihanna “Love On The Brain”

Rihanna jumps a slot this week, as “Love On The Brain” becomes her 22nd Top Five hit. Beyond that, it’s her 30th Top 10 single, and her 40th Top 20 hit.

All these achievements put Rihanna among the highest-powered chart artists of all time. In fact, only four acts own more Top Five hits than Rihanna. The Beatles lead the way with 29; Madonna has 28; Mariah Carey has 26; and Janet Jackson has 24.

Number 4: Zayn & Taylor Swift “I Don’t Wanna Live Forever”

Zayn and Taylor Swift step back a slot to number four with their Fifty Shades Darker soundtrack hit “I Don’t Wanna Live Forever.”

Zayn just did an interview with the Sunday Times Magazine, in which he talks about developing an eating disorder and struggling with anxiety. Both stemmed from that he said was an overly-controlled atmosphere while he was a member of One Direction – and he says he overcame both conditions after leaving the group in 2015.

Number 3: Bruno Mars “That’s What I Like ”

Bruno Mars rises a slot to third place with “That’s What I Like” – this is his eighth single to reach the Top Three.

Mars’ real name is Peter Hernandez – he says his father bestowed the nickname “Bruno” upon him because he was a chunky little boy who reminded his dad of the pro wrestler Bruno Sammartino. He says he picked the “Mars” name himself, to add a little pizzazz.

Number 2: Migos Featuring Lil Uzi Vert “Bad And Boujee”

Migos and Lil Uzi Vert stay strong in second place with their former champ “Bad And Boujee,” and these Georgia rappers have been making noise in Texas.

Migos went to Austin for the huge South By Southwest (SXSW) event and packed the house: fans began lining up more than three hours before the show, and the line eventually wrapped around three city blocks.

Number 1: Ed Sheeran “Shape Of You”

Fans also continue flocking to Ed Sheeran, who rules the Hot 100 for a seventh total week with “Shape Of You.” Sheeran’s hitting the road here in North America, and he just announced his support act.

He took to Twitter on March 20 to reveal that James Blunt will be the supporting act when he kicks off his North American tour on June 29.

In case your memory needs refreshing, Blunt topped charts the world over in 2005 with “You’re Beautiful” – including here in the United States.

What happens next week? Let’s meet in seven days and find out.
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From: MeNeedIt

A message of resilience posted online in the wake of the London terrorist attack Wednesday was read in Parliament, it was mentioned on the BBC, and it went viral online.

Unfortunately, the hand written message, which appeared in a photo of a whiteboard commonly seen in the London Underground, was a hoax.

The message read: “All terrorists are politely reminded that THIS IS LONDON and whatever you do to us, we will drink tea and jolly well carry on. Thank you.”

One member of Parliament read the message to Prime Minister Theresa May, who then called the sign a “wonderful tribute” that “encapsulated everything everybody in this house has said today.”

An announcer on the BBC’s Radio 4 recited the sign’s message on the air, while other journalists and politicians shared the image online, The Washington Post reported.

Turns out the sign, which looked quite authentic, was created using one of the many sign generators available online.

Whiteboards are common in the London Underground, usually giving service information and occasionally displaying a joke or something meant to be inspirational.
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From: MeNeedIt

On Tuesday, the rusty patched bumblebee became the first wild bee in the continental United States to be placed on the U.S. endangered species list. Veronica Balderas Iglesias reports, scientists hope the designation will help safeguard one of the small insects that play a big role in American agriculture and the environment.
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From: MeNeedIt

Grumbling Venezuelans were lining up for scarce gasoline across the OPEC nation on Wednesday, due to mounting oil industry woes in the country with the world’s largest crude reserves.

Venezuela, which also has the world’s cheapest gasoline, has wrestled with intermittent gasoline shortages in recent months, especially in the central coastal area.

Long lines were reported in capital Caracas, which is unusual, and the eastern city of Puerto Ordaz on Wednesday.

Dozens of cars could be seen snaking into streets and some service stations were shuttered.

“I can’t find 95 octane gasoline anywhere. And we’re an oil-producing country! It’s pathetic,” said Jose Paredes in Caracas’ wealthy Altamira district.

The waits heap extra hardship on the nation of 30 million, where many already jostle for hours in hot lines for food and medicines amid product shortages caused by a brutal economic crisis under leftist president Nicolas Maduro.

State oil company PDVSA’s new head of trading blamed the shortages on problems with internal shipping of products and vowed the issue would be solved soon.

“We’re strengthening deliveries to the center of the country to stabilize gasoline supplies,” Ysmel Serrano tweeted.

Industry Woes

The gasoline shortage comes as new top executives are appointed at PDVSA, largely from political and military quarters, and increasing problems in Venezuela’s oil industry.

As of March 22, about a dozen tankers were waiting around PDVSA ports in Venezuela and the Caribbean to discharge refined products, components, and diluents crucial for oil blending, Reuters vessel tracking data showed.

Backlogs and payment delays to PDVSA’s suppliers, which are now demanding to be prepaid, sometimes mean shippers wait weeks to deliver oil products.

And many tankers are idle because PDVSA cannot pay for hull cleaning, inspections, and other port services, according to internal documents and Reuters data.

Union leader Ivan Freites, a PDVSA critic, said Venezuelan refineries, which have been at around half capacity for months amid outages, only had oil inventories for around two days versus a standard of 15.

“To solve this immediately, we would need deliveries from at least 10 tankers,” he said.

In Venezuela’s industrial city of Puerto Ordaz, the problem has been increasing this week and National Guard soldiers were trying to maintain order at operational service stations.

“We’ve been working extra hours, opening before 6 a.m and closing after 11 p.m. because of the lines,” said Caura service station manager Felix Rodriguez, tired and with blood-shot eyes, adding he had not been given a reason for the slow deliveries.
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From: MeNeedIt

Dozens of German companies including Siemens attended meetings in Bolivia this week to discuss building a coast-to-coast railway through Brazil, Bolivia and Peru that could speed up the export of corn and soybeans to Asia, German and Bolivian officials said on Wednesday.

The massive, $10-billion project would involve building a 3,700-kilometer (2,299 miles) rail line across the continent, linking the Atlantic and Pacific oceans, through mountains and jungles.

“This is the project of the century,” said Germany’s State Secretary of German Transport, Building and Urban Development Rainer Bomba.

Representatives from Brazil, Peru, Paraguay, Uruguay and Bolivia as well as Germany and Switzerland are still studying the feasibility of the train route, which would drastically shorten shipping routes from Brazil’s coast to Asian markets for key commodities.

Siemens, Europe’s top engineering group, participated in the meetings “to get more information about the project,” spokesman Dennis Hofmann said in an email.

“The project is at an early stage and questions have to be clarified,” he wrote.

The discussions, on Tuesday and Wednesday, come after a similar, Chinese-led project build a trans-South America railway ran into roadblocks late last year due to cost and environmental concerns.

Bolivian and German officials did not name other companies that attended the meetings, but Bomba said: “The presence of 40 German companies here demonstrates that Germany is not only in the planning phase, but also in the realization phase.”

Bolivia’s Public Works Minister Milton Claros told Reuters Bolivia and Germany had signed agreements for technical assistance and financing for the project. The ministry said the project would connect the Brazilian port of Santos to the Peruvian port of Ilo and had a preliminary cost estimate of $10 billion.

Brazil is expected to export 28 million tons of corn and 61 million tonnes of soybeans in the 2016/17 crop year according to the USDA. It is the world’s largest soybean exporter and second-largest corn exporter.

China and Peru agreed in 2015 to study a 3,000-mile-long railway through the Andes, but Peru balked when China estimated its cost at $60 billion. Peru’s President Pedro Pablo Kuczynski later said the rail should go through Bolivia.

Land-locked Bolivia has long pined for a corridor to the Pacific, blasting Chile for taking its coastline in a war in the late 19th century and maintaining its Navy on Lake Titicaca.

Brazil had also questioned the Chinese project and would likely back the Bolivian route, a member of the Brazilian delegation said.

“We identified problems in the reports made by the Chinese group. We communicated the points of disagreement to Chinese authorities and we are seeing how we can continue the studies,” said Joao Carlos Parkinson, coordinator of economic affairs at Brazil’s Foreign Ministry, who attended the meetings.

Brazil’s Ambassador to Bolivia Raymundo Santos said talks would continue.

“Our delegation confirmed Brazil’s interest in participating,” he said. “The political side has been resolved, but now the technical work has to move forward.”
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From: MeNeedIt

Google Maps users will soon be able to broadcast their movements to friends and family — the latest test of how much privacy people are willing to sacrifice in an era of rampant sharing.

The location-monitoring feature will begin rolling out Wednesday in an update to the Google Maps mobile app, which is already installed on most of the world’s smartphones. It will also be available on personal computers.

Google believes the new tool will be a more convenient way for people to let someone know where they are without having to text or call them.  The Mountain View, California, company has set up the controls so individuals can decide with whom they want to share their whereabouts and for how long — anywhere from a few minutes to indefinitely.

But location sharing in one of the world’s most popular apps could cause friction in marriages and other relationships if one partner demands to know where the other is at all times. Similar tensions could arise if parents insist their teenagers turn on the location-sharing option before they go out.

Some share concerns

It could also be turned into a way to stalk someone entangled in an abusive relationship, warned Ruth Glenn, executive director for the National Coalition Against Domestic Violence. “It has the potential to be another tool in an abuser’s toolkit,” she said.

Similar tracking is already available on other apps; Glympse, founded by former Microsoft employees, has offered this function for years. Although it isn’t as wide-ranging, Apple also offers a tracking option called “Find My Friends” on its iPhone, iPad and Watch.

That’s one of the reasons Google isn’t expecting a lot of complaints about adding the option to Maps, especially since everyone can decide when to turn it on and who can monitor them.

“We don’t feel like we are changing the game,” said Jen Fitzpatrick, Google’s vice president of maps.

Tracking only a tap away

Maps users will be able to activate the location-sharing feature by tapping a button near the search bar and then picking a person from their contact list to text with the information. If the recipient doesn’t have the Google Maps app on their phone, it will text them a link to open the location on the map in a browser.

The settings also allow users to determine how long their movements can be tracked each time a location is shared. If no time limit is selected, Google will periodically send people email reminders that they’re still sharing their location, a step that Glenn said may help anyone who didn’t know an abusive partner was still following them.
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From: MeNeedIt

Rising rates of superbug tuberculosis (TB) are threatening to derail decades of progress against the contagious disease, experts said Thursday, and new drugs powerful enough to treat them are few and far between.

TB kills more people each year than any other infectious disease, including HIV and AIDS. In 2015 alone, it is estimated to have killed 1.8 million people, according to the World Health Organization (WHO).

While some new antibiotics with the potential to treat some drug-resistant strains are becoming available for the first time, experts who conducted a global study said that without accurate diagnostics, better case tracking and clear treatment guidelines, their effectiveness could rapidly be lost.

“Resistance to anti-tuberculosis drugs is a global problem that threatens to derail efforts to eradicate the disease,” said Keertan Dheda, a University of Cape Town professor who co-led research published in the Lancet Respiratory Medicine journal. “Cure rates for drug-resistant TB are poor and people can remain infectious.”

TB is a bacterial infection normally treated with a combination of antibiotics. But extensive overuse of antibiotics worldwide has led to a rise in drug-resistant “superbug” strains. Bacteria can acquire many drug-resistance traits over time, making several types of antibiotics ineffective.

Some 1 in 5 cases of TB are now resistant to at least one major anti-TB drug, the researchers found.

Around 1 in 20 are classed as multidrug-resistant (MDR) — meaning they are resistant to two essential first-line TB drugs, isoniazid and rifampicin — or extensively drug-resistant — meaning they are also resistant to fluoroquinolones and second-line injectable drugs.

Approximately half of global cases of MDR-TB are in India, China, and Russia, but migration and international travel have allowed these highly drug-resistant strains to emerge in almost every part of the world.

In a commentary on TB in the same journal, David W. Dowdy, a specialist at Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health in the United States, warned that over the next decade, “it is quite possible that we will see a drug-resistant tuberculosis epidemic of unprecedented global scale.”

He added, however, that it might also be possible for the global health community to bring about “an unprecedented reversal” of the drug-resistant TB problem.

“The difference between these two outcomes lies less with the pathogen and more with … whether we have the political will to prioritize,” he said. “Drug-resistant TB is not standing still; neither can we.”
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From: MeNeedIt

Tyrannosaurus rex and his buddies could be on the move as a new study proposes a massive shake-up of the dinosaur family tree.

Scientists who took a deeper look at dinosaur fossils suggest a different evolutionary history for dinosaurs, moving theropods such as T. rex to a new branch of the family tree and hinting at an earlier and more northern origin for dinosaurs.

The revised dinosaur tree makes more sense than the old one, initially designed more than a century ago based on hip shape, said Matt Baron, a paleontology doctoral student at the University of Cambridge in England. He is the lead author of the study in Wednesday’s journal Nature.

“If the authors are correct, this really turns our longstanding understanding of dinosaur evolution upside down!” Kristi Curry Rogers, a paleontologist at Macalaster College in Minnesota who wasn’t part of the study, wrote in an email.

Dinosaurs are split into two groups. One group has bird-like hips and is called Ornithischia. It includes the stegosaurus. The group with reptile-like hips is called Saurischia, and includes the brontosaurus.

Theropods, which include T. rex and the type of dinosaurs that later evolved into modern-day birds, were considered an offshoot from the group that includes the brontosaurus. The new study moves them to the group that includes the stegosaurus, but on a different branch.

“It means that animals that we’ve always thought were very closely related to each other might not be,” said Rogers, who praised the study, saying it prompts a whole bunch of new questions.

Baron and colleagues looked at 450 characteristics of 75 dinosaur species. They used computer simulations to try to group together those with similar characteristics, creating tens of thousands of potential dinosaur family trees. The proposed one combines the 80 most likely scenarios, he said.

It may sound like an academic exercise, but it’s important to understand how big animals changed with time, Baron said, noting that the dinosaurs ruled Earth for more than 150 million years.

His research suggests that dinosaurs popped up 247 million years ago — 10 million years earlier than the standard theory says — with a dinosaur from Tanzania in East Africa. It’s called Nyasasaurus, was 6 to 10 feet tall and a plant-eater.

He also found an animal that’s not quite a dinosaur, but as close as you can get, that is a reptilian ancestor. And it was in Scotland. Previous theories pointed to dinosaurs first evolving out of the Southern Hemisphere, and many outside scientists said there wasn’t enough evidence to support Baron’s northern concept.

The paper is already dividing dinosaur experts. Famed dinosaur expert Paul Sereno at the University of Chicago called the basis of the Baron family tree “weak” and said “the central question the paper leaves unanswered for me is ‘Why?’”

Matthew Carrano, dinosaur curator at the Smithsonian Natural History Museum, said it’s hard to side with any theory because early dinosaur fossil records are so incomplete.
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From: MeNeedIt