Wickedly funny royal comedy-drama The Favourite lived up to its name Wednesday, leading the race for the British Academy Film Awards.

Yorgos Lanthimos’ film received 12 nominations for the U.K. equivalent of the Oscars, including best film, best director and best actress, for Olivia Colman. Colman won a Golden Globe on Sunday for her performance as Britain’s 18th-century Queen Anne.

Colman’s co-stars, Emma Stone and Rachel Weisz, received supporting-actress nominations as the two women competing for the monarch’s patronage.

Freddie Mercury biopic Bohemian Rhapsody, lunar drama First Man, autobiographical Mexican story Roma and musical melodrama A Star Is Born each received seven nominations for the prizes, considered an indicator of likely success at Hollywood’s Academy Awards in what’s shaping up to be an unpredictable awards season.

Best-picture nominees for the British awards, known as BAFTAs, are BlacKkKlansman, The Favourite, Green Book, Roma and A Star is Born.

Nominees for best British film — a separate category — are Channel Islands thriller Beast, Bohemian Rhapsody, The Favourite, fashion documentary McQueen, Laurel and Hardy biopic Stan and Ollie and crime thriller You Were Never Really Here.

Best-actress nominees are Colman, Glenn Close for The Wife, Lady Gaga for A Star is Born, Melissa McCarthy for Can You Ever Forgive Me? and Viola Davis for Widows.

Best-actor contenders are Bradley Cooper for A Star is Born, Christian Bale for Vice, Rami Malek for Bohemian Rhapsody, Steve Coogan for Stan and Ollie and Viggo Mortensen for Green Book.

The winners will be announced Feb. 10 at a ceremony in London hosted by Absolutely Fabulous star Joanna Lumley.
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From: MeNeedIt

A Georgia man involved with a recent documentary detailing abuse allegations against R. Kelly told police the singer’s manager threatened him.

Timothy Savage told an officer on Jan. 3 that Don Russell had texted him saying it would be best for him and his family if the documentary didn’t air, according to a Henry County police report.

Savage said he and his wife were involved with Lifetime’s “Surviving R. Kelly” series. The series, which aired earlier this month, looks at the singer’s history and allegations that he has sexually abused women and girls. Kelly, who turned 52 on Tuesday, has denied wrongdoing.

Russell called Savage while the officer was there and Savage put the phone on speaker so the officer could listen, the police report says. It went on to say that Russell accused Savage of lying to Lifetime and said that if Savage continued to support the series, Russell and Kelly would be forced to release information that would show Savage was a liar and that would ruin him, his reputation, his business and his family.

Contact information for Russell could not be immediately found.

The report says the case is being forwarded to the criminal investigations division for review.

In Kelly’s hometown Chicago, Cook County State’s Attorney Kim Foxx addressed reporters Tuesday afternoon after her office had been inundated with calls about the allegations in the documentary, some tied to his Chicago-area home.

Foxx watched the series herself and said she found it “deeply, deeply disturbing.”

“I was sickened by the allegations. I was sickened as a survivor. I was sickened as a mother. I was sickened as a prosecutor,” she said.

But Foxx also said there’s no active investigation of Kelly and launching one would require victims and witnesses.

A Cook County jury acquitted Kelly of all 14 counts of child pornography in 2008. Prosecutors had argued a videotape showed him engaged in graphic sex acts with a girl as young as 13. Kelly and the alleged victim, in her 20s at the time of the trial, denied it was them in the video.

Kelly’s Chicago attorney, Steve Greenberg, said in a phone interview Tuesday evening that the allegations in the Lifetime documentary were false.

“Ten and a half years after he was found innocent [at trial of child pornography charges] and to fill reality TV time — someone comes up with another round of stories,” he said. “No one has found any sex slaves or underage girls because there aren’t any.”

Greenberg also said it was inappropriate for a state’s attorney to characterize allegations she’d seen on TV, prior to charges or even an investigation.

“Who makes their assessment of the evidence based on reality TV?” he said.

Kelly rose from poverty on Chicago’s South Side to become a star singer, songwriter and producer. Despite his legal troubles a decade ago, he still retains a following.

Kelly won a Grammy in 1997 for “I Believe I Can Fly,” and is known for such raunchy hits as “Bump N’ Grind” and “Ignition.”

 
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From: MeNeedIt

A group of concerned Zimbabweans has started an anti-alcohol and drug campaign, targeting communities in which unemployed young people resort to drinking and using narcotics to alleviate the stress of not having work. Those involved in the campaign say the solution lies largely with improving the country’s moribund economy.

Fewer than three in 10 young Zimbabweans have steady jobs. Many are idle and see no economic opportunity. For some, that leads to problems with alcohol and drugs. 

Church leaders, community leaders, and government officials have started warning youths of the impact of drug and alcohol abuse in Zimbabwe and its effect on their physical wellbeing and mental health.

With drug use growing in Zimbabwe, President Emmerson Mnangagwa’s government has called for an all-stakeholders meeting on February 1 to come up with possible solutions.

Zimbabwe’s deputy director of Mental Health Services, Dr. Chido Rwafa, says the government cannot deal with the problem of substance abuse alone.

“Alcohol and substance use is a rising problem in all of Africa, and also in Zimbabwe, and it has become one of our top three diagnoses that we are seeing in our mental health unit, so it is becoming a problem. We need a coordinated approach to this problem. It is a multi-sectorial problem. We need a combined effort between government, between non-governmental organizations, with the community itself,” Rwafa said.

Youths are susceptible to peer pressure and can easily gain access to drugs, says Dr. Rwafa. Once hooked on drugs, they also become more likely to engage in criminal activities. 

This 20-year-old asked us not to film him when he was smoking cannabis. He says drug use would fall if more people could find employment. 

“The best way is just to improve our country economically such that all those people loitering in the streets will find jobs and will be focused. We are going nowhere. Even if you are to look (in the streets), there are some other people damaged (by drugs). Fifty percent of youths in the streets, they can not even work. Their life has been destructed by drugs etc. It is not that they want drug abuse,” Mandizha said.

Roman Catholic Priest Cloudy Maganga is trying to reduce substance abuse by youths by keeping them busy and offering counseling. 

“Within our hall, upstairs we are creating what we call a study center for the young people. We will have computers… We have also started what we call the sports for the young people. We have created a volleyball pitch, we have created also a netball pitch for the young people so that when they are free, during their free time, they can be engaged in sports, everyone here. So at least with that we are removing them from being just idle,” Maganga said.

While that may help, when young people have finished playing, they still find themselves unemployed and in the same conditions youths like Takudzwa Mandizha say make them turn to drugs.

 
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From: MeNeedIt

A group of concerned Zimbabweans has started an anti-alcohol and drug campaign, targeting communities in which unemployed young people resort to drinking and using narcotics to alleviate the stress of not having work. As Columbus Mavhunga reports from Harare, those involved in the campaign say the solution lies largely with improving the country’s moribund economy.
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From: MeNeedIt

The CES 2019 gadget show opened its doors Tuesday, with tech companies from giants to tiny startups showing off their latest products and services.

In recent years, CES’s influence has declined as Apple, Google and other major companies throw their own events to launch new wares. Still, more than 180,000 people from about 150 countries are expected to attend. The sprawling event spans 11 official venues, plus scores of unofficial ones throughout Las Vegas. The four-day show in Las Vegas opened after two days of media previews. 

Here are the latest findings and observations from Associated Press reporters on the ground.

Cutting through the babel

Google has transformed CES into a Disney-like theme park – complete with singing animatronic macarons – to showcase new features of its voice-enabled digital assistant.

This includes an “interpreter mode” that enables some of Google’s smart home devices to work as a translator. It’s being piloted at a hotel concierge desk near the Las Vegas tech conference and rolls out to consumer devices in several weeks. 

Voice assistants are getting pretty good at translating speech into text, but it’s a thornier challenge in artificial intelligence to enable real-time translation across different languages. Google’s new feature expands upon real-time translation services it’s rolled out to Android phones and headphones over the past year.

This is the second year that Google Assistant had made a huge splash at CES in an effort to outbid Amazon’s Alexa as the voice assistant of choice. 

Google this year has an amusement park ride that resembles Disney’s “It’s a Small World,” though on a roller-coaster-like train at slow speeds. Talking and singing characters showcase Google’s various voice-assistant features as visitors ride along.

Google isn’t the only CES exhibitor promising the next generation of instant translation. Chinese AI firm iFlytek has been showing of its translation apps and devices that are already popular among Chinese travelers. And at least two startups, New York-based Waverly Labs and China-based TimeKettle, are promoting their earbuds that work as in-ear translation devices.

Bring that umbrella

IBM is expanding its side job as the world’s meteorologist.

IBM CEO Ginni Rometty used a keynote address Tuesday to unveil a new global forecasting system that promises more accurate local weather reports in places that never had them before.

The computing giant owns The Weather Company, which runs popular weather services including weather.com and the Weather Channel and Weather Underground apps (though not the Weather Channel television network). Those apps provide precise and constantly updating forecasts in places like the U.S. and parts of Europe and Japan, but not in most of the world.

IBM says its new forecasting model relies in part on “crowd-sourced” data – barometric pressure readings from millions of smartphones and sensor readings from passing airplanes. 

Weather Company CEO Cameron Clayton says the new system is intended to aid IBM’s business providing critical weather data to airlines, energy firms and other industries. But he says it will also have societal benefits, such as helping small farmers in India or parts of Africa yield better crops. 

IBM may have trouble persuading some users to agree to transmit atmospheric data to IBM after the city of Los Angeles sued last week to stop the Weather Channel’s data-collection practices. The lawsuit alleges that the company uses location information not just to personalize weather but also to track users’ every step and profit off that information. The company has denied any impropriety with sharing location data collected from users, saying it does disclose what it does.

Samsung wants to bring robots home

Up next for Samsung: a robot that can keep its eye on grandma and grandpa.

The rolling robot, which talks and has two digital eyes on a black screen, can track medicines they take, measure blood pressure and call 911 if it detects a fall.

The company didn’t not say when Samsung Bot Care would be available, but brought the robot out on stage Monday at a presentation at CES. Samsung also said it is working on a robot for stores and another for testing and purifying the air in homes.

Samsung also unveiled TVs, appliances and other high-tech gizmos – but not a foldable phone it hinted at in November. But a startup called Royole did. The Royole FlexPai smartphone was first shown in November but the California-based company has more details. The phone will have a 7.8-inch display that can be folded like a wallet, priced at more than $1,300.

Star delight

Sony brought some star power to CES with a visit from musician Pharrell Williams, straight from trip to Anguilla.

The star of hit songs such as “Happy” came to talk about a mostly secret project that he and Sony are supposedly undertaking. But in the end, it was clearly an attempt by Sony to sprinkle some stardust on launches for TVs and other products.

“I was a little bit worried that he was still on holiday, but he is here,” Sony Music head Rob Stringer told the crowd.
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From: MeNeedIt

The trappings of success continue to arrive for K-pop sensation BTS, the latest a contract with the toy company Mattel which secured rights to produce dolls of the boy band.

And Mattel is not beyond riding those K-pop coattails. Shares of Mattel Inc. spiked almost 9 percent Monday, a day after the toymaker announced a global licensing agreement that also includes collectible figures and games.

The South Korean boy band, made up of members RM, Jin, SUGA, j-hope, Jimin, V and Jung Kook, last year became the first Korean pop group to reach No. 1 on the Billboard top 200.

BTS is an acronym of Bangtan Sonyeondan or “Beyond the Scene.” The band debuted in June 2013.
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From: MeNeedIt

Former “House of Cards” star Kevin Spacey on Monday pleaded not guilty to sexually assaulting an 18-year-old man at a bar in Nantucket more than two years ago, while a judge ordered the man to preserve his mobile phone data from the time.

Dressed in a gray suit and tie, Spacey did not speak during a brief hearing Nantucket District Court to face one count of felony indecent assault and battery, though a plea of not guilty was entered on his behalf by the court.

Spacey’s lawyer Alan Jackson persuaded Judge Thomas Barrett to order Spacey’s alleged victim to keep all data from his cell phone for six months following the July 7, 2016, incident.

Jackson said the data was “likely exculpatory.”

Videos show Spacey at club

Jackson said in court papers that police reports showed the 18-year-old busboy exchanged numerous text messages and Snapchat videos with his then-girlfriend about his interactions with Spacey at the Club Car bar on the beach resort island off the coast of Massachusetts but never mentioned the alleged sexual assault.

Spacey could face up to five years in prison if convicted.

His appearance in a crowded courthouse surrounded by television trucks came at what is normally a quiet time of year the island, a former whaling hub.

The 59-year-old actor is one of dozens of men in entertainment, business and politics who have been accused of sexual misconduct since accusations against movie producer Harvey Weinstein in 2017 sparked the #MeToo movement.

Spacey became embroiled in controversy in October 2017 when actor Anthony Rapp accused him of trying to seduce him in 1986 when Rapp was 14.

Spacey apologized for inappropriate conduct with Rapp. The controversy led to Spacey being dropped from the Netflix television series “House of Cards” and erased from the film “All the Money in the World.”

‘Let’s get drunk’

The Nantucket allegations were first raised in 2017 by former Boston television journalist Heather Unruh, who told reporters Spacey groped her teenage son.

The victim told police Spacey had bought him several rounds of beer and whiskey and said at one point, “Let’s get drunk,” according to charging documents.

As they stood next to a piano, Spacey groped Unruh’s son, the bus boy told investigators.

Reuters is not identifying Unruh’s son because he is an alleged victim of sex assault.

“My client is a determined and encouraging voice for those victims not yet ready to report being sexually assaulted,” attorney Mitchell Garabedian said in an email.
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From: MeNeedIt

A leap in technology has allowed scientists to take their DNA labs out into the fields, so farmers can identify diseases quickly and tackle the problem before their crops die, or the virus spreads to neighboring farms. Faith Lapidus reports.
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From: MeNeedIt

Here’s a simple statistic: by 2030, the number of knee replacement surgeries in the U.S. alone is expected to rise over 600 percent. But researchers at Ohio State University’s Wexner Medical Center are now offering an alternative that can relieve the pain and slow the osteoarthritis that most often leads to the need for knee replacement. VOA’s Kevin Enochs reports.
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From: MeNeedIt

For some, castlelike mansions in Los Angeles are just pretty to look at and an unattainable dream. But for designer Chris Toledo, they are an inspiration. He makes exact, yet miniature copies of these magnificent houses. They have it all — in bathrooms, electricity, fireplaces and chandeliers. One day, Toledo hopes to sell his miniature creations and earn enough to buy a real-life house of his dreams. Angelina Bagdasaryan reports from Los Angeles on this story narrated by Anna Rice.
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From: MeNeedIt

Every January, tech insiders head to Las Vegas, Nevada where the biggest tech companies show off their latest devices at the Consumer Electronics Show (CES). Smaller start-ups also vie for attention at one of the largest tech gatherings of the year. Tina Trinh meets with a Brooklyn startup as they prepare to head west.
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From: MeNeedIt

Thousands of Rohingya refugees in Cox’s Bazar, Bangladesh, now have safe drinking water thanks to a combination of green technology and sunlight.

Cox’s Bazar has plenty of refugees. More than 900,000. Most have arrived in Bangladesh since August 2017, when violence and persecution by the Myanmar military triggered a mass exodus of Rohingya refugees.  

The refugees are living in squalid conditions across 36 different locations in Cox’s Bazar. Water is scarce in most locations. But sunshine is plentiful. Over the past six months, the U.N. refugee agency and partners have been putting into operation solar-powered safe water systems.

The UNHCR reports the first five systems are now running at full capacity. It says the new safe water systems run entirely on electricity generated through solar panels. UNHCR spokesman, Andrej Mahecic, says this new network is providing safe water to more than 40,000 refugees. 

“Using the solar energy has allowed the humanitarian community to reduce the energy costs and emissions,” said Mahecic. “So, there is a clear environmental impact of this. Chlorination is also a life-saver in refugee sites of this scale. The recent tests revealed that most contamination of drinking water occurs during collection, transport and storage at the household level.”

Mahecic notes chlorinated water is safe for drinking and also eliminates the risk of the spread of disease.  

The UNHCR along with its partner agencies are hoping to install nine more solar-powered water networks across the refugee camp in the coming year. The project, which is funded by the agency, will cost $10 million. It will benefit an additional 55,000 Rohingya refugees.

The UNHCR says its ultimate aim is to provide 20 liters of safe water to every single refugee on a daily basis. It says this will be done by piping in the solar powered water to collective taps strategically installed throughout the Kutupalog-Balukhali refugee site.
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From: MeNeedIt