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This Iconic Fast Food Chain Just Announced Even More Locations Coming Near You This Iconic Fast Food Chain Just Announced Even More Locations Coming Near You open sign hanging on door of business – Thana Prasongsin/Getty Images While we previously brought you some worrisome signs about Wendy’s future (such as controversy over the restaurant’s plan of implementing AI-powered drive-thrus), a recent announcement from the fast food chain shows that expansion is on the horizon. At Wendy’s 2025 Investor Day, the restaurant revealed its plans to open 1,000 new locations throughout the world by 2028, with 350 new restaurants slated to be built in the U.S. The new locations are part of the chain’s ongoing growth initiative as explained by Wendy’s chief financial officer Ken Cook in a press release detailing Investor Day happenings. “In order to execute on our strategy, we are investing in building new restaurants around the globe and deploying technology that will enhance the customer experience and increase restaurant profitability,” Cook explains. It’s not entirely clear exactly where the new restaurants will be located or when the roll out will officially begin, but this should be welcome news for fast food fans who love Wendy’s menu items such as the iconic Frosty (which is now available in two new formats, Frosty Fusions and Frosty Swirls). As of now, Wendy’s restaurants can be found in over 30 countries, totaling more than 7,000 locations worldwide. Read more: Popular Fast Food Items That Aren’t What You Think Wendy’s storefront daytime – refrina/Shutterstock Recent restaurant excursions may have you asking whether dollar fast food menus still even exist (and based on increasing prices at popular establishments, the answer is most likely no). Most consumers these days find fast food to be absurdly expensive, and increasing grocery costs have many people wondering whether dining out can still fit into their budgets. Wendy’s acknowledged some of these concerns in its 2025 Investor Day report, highlighting some factors that could impede the chain’s expansion plan. For instance, tightened consumer spending and poor economic developments throughout the world could prevent the chain from meeting its financial goals. On a more personal level, the effectiveness of the company’s marketing efforts plus its ability to create a pleasing experience for customers could also affect its growth strategy. Despite these very real obstacles, Kirk Tanner, president and chief executive officer at Wendy’s, is optimistic. According to Tanner, “The Wendy’s brand has tremendous strength, and we will unlock its full potential … Our relentless pursuit of excellence in our food and our restaurants will position Wendy’s for long-term success as we win across our global markets.” Story Continues Source link #Iconic #Fast #Food #Chain #Announced #Locations #Coming Pelican News View the full article at [Hidden Content]

Innovation strategy continues to deliver for Co-op Innovation strategy continues to deliver for Co-op Chris Conway, Co-op Food’s e-commerce director, promised on 11 February that a rebranded business-to-business (B2B) quick commerce app from the organisation was imminent. Talking at Retail Week and The Grocer’s Live 2025 event in North London, Conway said Co-op’s Nisa to You app – helping more than 30 of the independent retailers in its network to deliver groceries speedily to customers – was set for relaunch. It was initially unveiled in trial form last summer, enabled by Co-op’s tech stack and with integrations into the same couriers used by the Co-op Food stores. “We’ll be able to commercialise and operationalise it and go at huge scale,” Conway said at Live 2025. On 27 February, it all became clear. Co-op announced the launch of Peckish, describing it as a “million-pound rapid delivery grocery app” offering “a technologically advanced service to thousands of independent retailers looking to serve their customers and communities online”. The new name is incidental – it’s what the tech can help individual stores to achieve that’s important. The has Co-op said Peckish will give small, often family-owned, independent grocery businesses, shops and other co-operative retail societies the chance to provide an online grocery shopping and delivery service using their stores as fulfilment centres. The retailer stated that it helps these businesses overcome barriers that independent retailers face when moving to sell online, which typically relate to cost, scale and resource. In some cases, it means independents will be able to get goods delivered to their local customers in under 30 minutes. Co-op, which has rapidly built its own quick commerce proposition in the past five years, with the aim of being a leading grocer in that space, already works with Deliveroo, Just Eat and Uber Eats nationwide, as well as Starship Technologies for autonomous robot delivery in some regions. The new Peckish app will mean the independents it owns thanks to its acquisition of symbol group Nisa in 2018 can also offer many of these delivery courier partner options to their customers. Reinforcing the tech stack Co-op is making an initial £1m investment for year one on Peckish, and is targeting a sign-up rate of more than 1,000 stores in year one, with potential to treble that by year three. Peckish will be linked with a retailer’s electronic point of ***** (PoS) system, meaning it saves the individual store manual tasks such as pricing and stock control and management. Retailers who sign up to the service have also been promised a range of support including data and insight from Co-op’s quick commerce team, as well as PoS material, window stickers, leaflets, shelf talkers, digital assets, posters and banners. Matt Hood, Co-op Food managing director, said “consumers’ appetite for a convenient grocery delivery service in as little as 30 minutes from ordering increases almost weekly”. Hood announced major plans for Co-op growth in January, saying 75 new stores would be opening in 2025, with 80 undergoing refurbishment. A central cog of the work is to “maximise the potential of Co-op’s existing portfolio of properties”, and part of that means strengthening shops’ role in the retailer’s online proposition. Co-op calls its stores “micro-distribution hubs for its online home delivery operation”, with orders picked fresh in local stores and delivered quickly to ensure its high street shops benefit from online orders. The retailer said in January that it wants to grow its share of the quick commerce market to over 30%, which is one of the motivating factors behind Peckish. It has been incrementally reinforcing its tech stack to support this strategy, with a SAP migration completing in June 2024. Eight years previous, Co-op started implementing SAP’s Retail ECC Suite on HANA to drive improvements in product ranging, stock visibility and forecasting across its stores. More recently, RISE with SAP S/4HANA Cloud has been put in place which brings Co-op’s ERP into the cloud and streamlines its finance and procurement functions. In addition, an ongoing project with Manhattan Associates is seeing Co-op’s warehouse management systems (WMS) switching over to the supplier’s cloud-based Manhattan Active WMS as part of a move away from datacentre reliance. Meanwhile, in July 2024, Co-op started work with Walmart Commerce Technologies to implement the US grocery giant’s online fulfilment technology, Store Assist. The official jargon surrounding the tool is that it “digitises and streamlines online order fulfilment workflows”. What that means in practice is that Co-op can integrate all its third-party delivery partnerships on one platform and device, which is then put in the hands of store staff so they can understand, organise and manage a complex network of couriers turning up at shops to collect online orders throughout the day. Co-op even announced in September 2024 that some of its city centre stores will offer a 24-hour service, meaning consumers can order goods online for instant delivery at any time of day. The service, it said, could be ideal for shift workers, young families and late-night partygoers. Faster and better Co-op’s quick commerce investment and focus is not unique, albeit it is more comprehensive in its offering compared to the wider *** grocery industry. Tesco has doubled down on its Whoosh rapid delivery service in the last year, with it featuring heavily in the retailer’s national advertising campaigns. Former Deliveroo global head of strategy Francesca Jones arrived in January to lead Whoosh, which contributed significantly to a 10.8% year-over-year (YoY) Tesco online sales rise over Christmas 2024. Some 1.2 million customers placed orders on this instant delivery offering during the peak *******, supported by the expansion of the service which meant it was more accessible at Christmas than before and available up until 24 December. I speak to my team and say, ‘Don’t worry about the other grocers, see what McDonald’s is doing’ Chris Conway, Co-op Food Elsewhere, Ocado ramped up its Express It offering in August 2024, allowing its customers to book for same-day delivery up until 11am. One month before, Morrisons expanded its partnership with Just Eat to include on-demand grocery deliveries from its groceries from its supermarkets – in addition to the service from its cafés and Morrisons Daily convenience stores that had been in place since 2022. And as Co-op launches its B2B app, it’s worth remembering Snappy Shopper is already making waves in this space supporting convenience stores with an online delivery service. In January, it said its weekly trading volumes surged by 42% YOY at the end of 2024, with the platform facilitating more than £14m in monthly transactions during the final quarter. In December, Snappy Shopper said it was increasing the number of Tesco-owned One Stop stores served by its network to 530, further highlighting the consumer demand for rapid fulfilment from local stores. What’s behind the innovation? Talking at Live 2025, Conway gave some deep insight into Co-op’s innovation strategy and how it monitors its competition in the quick commerce space. “Our competitor set is amazing – it’s a privilege to be in that competitor set,” he said, adding that many of its competitors follow the Co-op with innovation. “Our competitor set in grocery is fantastic at supply chain, getting thousands of products to thousands of locations in the most efficient way possible.” Intriguingly, it’s an adjacent industry where Conway encourages his team to look for inspiration: “I speak to my team and say, ‘Don’t worry about the other grocers, see what McDonald’s is doing’. Go to some of their new sites and you see they’ve made space for riders, and the way they operate is effectively as a mini fulfilment centre as well as a restaurant. That’s fascinating and the way I see the future of Co-op going.” When looking at how the Co-op embraces digital and tech-enabled transformation, Conway said the organisation has gotten better over time. In particular, he said the Co-op has approved investment and funding in the past 18 months to do discovery work rather than waiting for a detailed business case. “Once you’ve done discovery, you’re almost in and it’s too late to back out,” he said, reflecting on the previous methods used by the retailer. “Now we’re prepared to throw some money away and do discovery to realise if it’s something we want to do. And what we realise is that, 95 times out of 100, once we’ve done discovery, it’s the right idea and we go ahead.” He talked of Co-op now having a “fail-fast mentality”, adding: “It’s been refreshing to be around that mentality; it wasn’t like that when I joined. How we’ve grown up and how the culture has changed is really infectious.” Conway stated that the Co-op is already benefiting from the SAP migration in terms of how quickly it can introduce new ideas and drive efficiency. It seems that having a thought-out approach to transformation can also be beneficial in dealing with unexpected burdens. With most retailers voicing concerns about the impact of the October 2024 Budget, which will result in increased employment costs from April in the form of greater National Insurance Contributions (NIC), Conway offered a pragmatic response. “In business, you have to expect the unexpected,” he said of the budget announcements. “Of course, the incremental costs are always a challenge, but it’s about realising the country is in quite a dilemma in terms of where to get the funding, so something had to give. “What’s more important is looking at your innovation transformation programme. As long as you have that constant balance of transformation where you’re driving efficiency but driving new business and growth – doing that equally – I think you’re able to ensure you’re able to cope with things like NIC.” Offering a personal viewpoint, Conway said that he envisions a growth agenda from the *** government coming into force in the second half of the year: “For now, it’s about continuing innovation, doubling down on cost savings, doing the right thing for colleagues and communities, and then hopefully we can put our foot down and support the government’s growth agenda.” Source link #Innovation #strategy #continues #deliver #Coop Pelican News View the full article at [Hidden Content] For verified travel tips and real support, visit: [Hidden Content]

Disney Teases Theme Park Integration With Disney X Fortnite Project Disney Teases Theme Park Integration With Disney X Fortnite Project One year ago, Disney invested $1.5 billion into Epic Games to create a massive Disney x Fortnite experience that has yet to come to fruition. But at South by Southwest, one of Disney’s Imagineers teased the way that this online experience may be able to play off of a guest’s trip to a Disney theme park. During the Disney parks panel at SXSW, Walt Disney Imagineering’s Asa Kalama–who oversees interactive experiences at Disney theme parks–used a ride in Star Wars Galaxy’s Edge as an example of how the real-life trip at the theme park can affect the Disney x Fortnite game for visitors. “Imagine… what if you could go to the park and have an experience in Smuggler’s Run [and] go on this amazing mission, but then have that affect or connect your gameplay at home,” said Kalama. Smuggler’s Run is a ride that places six people in control of the Millennium Falcon, and guests are graded on how well they performed, and if they escape with the cargo. A successful mission is supposed to bolster the reputation of the guests who pulled it off. Carrying that reputation over from the park to the game may be the interaction that Kalama is suggesting. Or perhaps achieving that feat can earn XP or a special item. Disney and Epic Games have yet to fully define what their collaboration will be, although most theories revolve around it being a metaverse experience that unites several of Disney’s major brands including Pixar, Marvel, Star Wars, Avatar, and ESPN. The project recently reached a milestone with the creation of a stable build, but fans have yet to see it for themselves. Last October, Disney’s Josh D’Amaro described the Disney x Fortnite experience as “a place where you can play games, a place where you can be social, a place where users can generate their own content.” He also indicated that the company went forward with its massive investment in Epic Games because it had “to adapt, or we are going to be left behind.” Source link #Disney #Teases #Theme #Park #Integration #Disney #Fortnite #Project Pelican News View the full article at [Hidden Content]

NFL free-agency 2025 tracker: Where Sam Darnold, Aaron Rodgers and top 150 players land – The Athletic – The Athletic NFL free-agency 2025 tracker: Where Sam Darnold, Aaron Rodgers and top 150 players land – The Athletic – The Athletic NFL free-agency 2025 tracker: Where Sam Darnold, Aaron Rodgers and top 150 players land – The Athletic The AthleticSources: Godwin returns to Bucs on 3-year deal ESPN2025 NFL Free Agency LIVE Deal Grader: Grading and tracking every transaction Pro Football FocusDK Metcalf reportedly joining Steelers in trade from Seahawks, will sign $150M contract Yahoo SportsBrowns 2025 Free Agency Live Updates clevelandbrowns.com Source link #NFL #freeagency #tracker #Sam #Darnold #Aaron #Rodgers #top #players #land #Athletic #Athletic Pelican News View the full article at [Hidden Content] For verified travel tips and real support, visit: [Hidden Content]

RISC-V mini AI PC that fits inside a Framework laptop shell revealed — DeepComputing’s DC-ROMA RISC-V AI PC claims 50 TOPS, 64GB RAM RISC-V mini AI PC that fits inside a Framework laptop shell revealed — DeepComputing’s DC-ROMA RISC-V AI PC claims 50 TOPS, 64GB RAM DeepComputing has developed a reputation as a pioneer of small form factor RISC-V PCs, being the first company to bring a RISC-V laptop to the market in 2022. The company is now accepting pre-orders for its newest product, a mini AI PC that can replace the mainboard of the Framework Laptop 13. The new device comes with two names: either the “DC-ROMA RISC-V AI PC” or the “DC-ROMA RISC-V Mainboard II for Framework Laptop 13” according to its listing page. The mainboard is one of many members of DeepComputing’s DC-ROMA line, a family of SFF/laptop PCs all built on the RISC-V architecture set. It is also DeepComputing’s second replacement mainboard for the Framework Laptop 13, with both the RISC-V AI PC and its predecessor functioning either inside the Framework or on its own as a stand-alone unit. The specs of the DC-ROMA RISC-V AI PC are slightly mysterious. The device will be based on the “world’s first RISC-V chiplet dual-die connected AI SoC.” The mystery SoC will hold a 64-bit 8-core RISC-V CPU running at up to 2 GHz, along with an NPU, GPU, and VPU to cover all of the AI bases. VPUs are an emerging type of microprocessor devoted to vision-based machine learning tasks, distinct from GPUs as they have no rasterization or video encoding abilities. The device will reportedly provide up to 50 TOPS of AI performance, with 40 TOPS coming just from the onboard NPU. The 3D-capable GPU onboard supports up to 8K@50Hz encoding, with the VPU tagging along for those vision-dependent AI training tasks. The mini PC supports up to 64GB of LPDDR5 RAM and NVMe SSDs, and we’d expect to see a microSD slot for the OS, as is common on DC-ROMA devices. The only SoC that advertizes the same specs (and makes the same bold “world’s first” claims) is Eswin Computing’s EIC7702X, which is two Eswin EIC7700Xs stuck together. The dual-CPUs, two 4-core SiFive Performance P550s, are rated for up to 1.8 GHz each, paired with GPUs based on Imagination IP. The EIC7700X, one-half of the EIC7702X we expect to find in the DC-ROMA PC, can be seen on SiFive’s HiFive Premier P550 developer board, which we reviewed earlier this year and gave 3.5 out of 5 stars. RISC-V is an open-source instruction set architecture, similar to x86 or Arm. RISC-V development has been very active in recent years, especially in China, where its open-source nature provides a path forward for ******** engineers stymied by an ongoing trade war with the United States. The DC-ROMA RISC-V AI PC, while not likely to blow anyone away with its speeds, does provide an extremely novel promise. Small form factor AI performance on the RISC-V platform is a very narrow intersection of three already niche worlds, but it may be a desirable buy for those happy few. The RISC-V Mainboard II for Framework Laptop 13 (aka the DC-ROMA RISC-V AI PC) is available now for pre-order from DeepComputing. The device will start at $300 on its release in Q3 2025, with a $9.90 deposit required today. If it follows the pattern of the first DC-ROMA Framework mainboard, it will likely be sold as a standalone board, inside a mini-PC enclosure, or pre-assembled inside a Framework Laptop 13. We’re cautiously optimistic about the future of this release, and as always stand ready to applaud any and all headway made towards a brighter future for RISC-V computing. Get Tom’s Hardware’s best news and in-depth reviews, straight to your inbox. Source link #RISCV #mini #fits #Framework #laptop #shell #revealed #DeepComputings #DCROMA #RISCV #claims #TOPS #64GB #RAM Pelican News View the full article at [Hidden Content]

Rules for repaying Social Security benefits are about to get stricter. Here's what to know Rules for repaying Social Security benefits are about to get stricter. Here's what to know Social Security beneficiaries who receive more money than they are owed will now face a 100% default withholding rate from their monthly checks, the agency said. Source link #Rules #repaying #Social #Security #benefits #stricter #Here039s Pelican News View the full article at [Hidden Content]

Elon Musk and Marco Rubio Share Awkward Social Media Embrace After White House Confrontation Elon Musk and Marco Rubio Share Awkward Social Media Embrace After White House Confrontation Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Elon Musk, the tech billionaire deputized by President Trump to slash federal spending, sought to smooth over their ugly confrontation in the White House last week with an awkward social media embrace on Monday, as Mr. Rubio formalized deep cuts to foreign aid that Mr. Musk had demanded. Mr. Rubio and Mr. Musk clashed during a meeting in the Cabinet Room of the White House last Thursday, in which the world’s richest man jeered the secretary of state for failing to make more sweeping staffing cuts to the agencies under his purview. In the same meeting, Mr. Rubio bristled at how Mr. Musk had undercut his leadership to flatten the U.S. Agency for International Development, the government’s lead agency for distributing foreign aid. On Monday, Mr. Rubio thanked Mr. Musk’s team at the Department of Government Efficiency for aiding in making the drastic cuts he had resisted, and announced that the agency’s remaining work would be subsumed under the State Department. Mr. Rubio wrote on his personal account on X, the social media platform owned by Mr. Musk, that 83 percent of U.S.A.I.D.’s programs were being cut. “The 5200 contracts that are now cancelled spent tens of billions of dollars in ways that did not serve, (and in some cases even harmed), the core national interests of the United States,” he added. Mr. Musk replied: “Tough, but necessary. Good working with you.” During the meeting last week, Mr. Trump defended Mr. Rubio for doing a “great job” and decreed that Mr. Musk’s team would be merely advising Cabinet secretaries about future cuts. But Mr. Rubio’s apparent embrace of Mr. Musk’s objectives revealed the extent to which the billionaire Trump supporter wields power in the administration. Mr. Rubio’s announcement appeared to be the official culmination of the process of culling foreign aid that had been underway for weeks, as Mr. Musk led the charge to greatly reduce the footprint of U.S.A.I.D., which manages about $42.5 billion in global assistance programs that represent less than 1 percent of the annual federal budget. The moves, which included canceling contracts, turning off payment systems, and laying off or forcing the vast majority of staff onto administrative leave, crippled the agency and left the global humanitarian aid industry that relied on the agency’s funding in limbo. Mr. Trump had announced in an executive order on the first day of his presidency that he was instituting a 90-day pause on foreign aid, pending a review, to bring the United States’ foreign aid programs in line with his administration’s interests. But the cuts to U.S.A.I.D. prompted a series of lawsuits from the unions representing agency staff members and the organizations that were stiffed by the cuts. One of those cases rose to the Supreme Court, which ruled last week that the administration had to comply with a lower court’s ruling to release the frozen funds — even though the Supreme Court did not specify exactly how much of the nearly $2 billion in contracts in question had to be restored. The plaintiffs in several lawsuits, as well as other critics of the Trump administration’s maneuvers, have derided the moves as ********, arguing that the law that created U.S.A.I.D. means that only Congress can significantly reduce its budget. They have also argued that the cuts are shortsighted, and will lead to widespread human suffering and ultimately hurt U.S. national security. Among the affected projects are those that deal with food security and famine warnings, agricultural efficiency, women’s health, L.G.B.T.Q. communities, and civil society and energy in war-torn Ukraine, according to a list of the canceled contracts shared with members of Congress last week, copies of which were obtained by The New York Times. In recent days, some health-related groups — many of which help distribute H.I.V. medication — have had their funding restored. The Trump administration has said in court filings that its review of programs was complete, but several organizations recently received questionnaires asking them to justify how their contracts lined up with U.S. interests. Deadlines for responding were as late as March 17. Robert Jimison and Stephanie Nolen contributed reporting. Source link #Elon #Musk #Marco #Rubio #Share #Awkward #Social #Media #Embrace #White #House #Confrontation Pelican News View the full article at [Hidden Content] For verified travel tips and real support, visit: [Hidden Content]

Six Nations: France poised to break clutch of try records Six Nations: France poised to break clutch of try records France’s 42-27 win over Ireland in Dublin on Saturday propelled them into the lead in the Six Nations title chase. But their free-scoring form has not only got the trophy engraver sharpening his tools, it is forcing a rewriting of historic records. Wing Louis Bielle-Biarrey’s scorching form has delivered seven tries in four matches – already a record for a Frenchman in a Six Nations campaign. With a match to go in this year’s tournament, he is already level with Ireland wing Jacob Stockdale’s record for tries in a single edition of the competition. If he crosses again against Scotland in Paris on Saturday, the 21-year-old will turn his sights to the all-time record in the tournament. England’s Cyril Lowe and Scotland’s Ian Smith scored eight tries in the 1914 and 1925 championships respectively. If he draws level with Lowe and Smith, Bielle-Biarrey will also match compatriot Philippe Bernat-Salles’ unique achievement from the 2001 tournament of scoring in every match. Source link #Nations #France #poised #break #clutch #records Pelican News View the full article at [Hidden Content]

Alfred flooding threat lingers as homes go under Alfred flooding threat lingers as homes go under More rainfall is expected in flood-hit areas devastated by ex-tropical cyclone Alfred as the toll of inundated homes rises. Source link #Alfred #flooding #threat #lingers #homes Pelican News View the full article at [Hidden Content]

All Battlefield 6 Classes—Every Battlefield 2025 Class & What we Know All Battlefield 6 Classes—Every Battlefield 2025 Class & What we Know Battlefield 6 Classes dictate how you approach every match. The franchise has notoriously stuck by the same few Classes throughout the years. EA’s early work on Classes for the 2025 Battlefield sequel has been revealed, and each one favors a particular playstyle. The Class system has always helped Battlefield stand out from its competition. Whereas Call of Duty allows users to create bespoke loadouts—usually factoring in the best meta gear and equipment—Battlefield is more restrictive. DICE gives the community a small handful of Classes to pick, and Battlefield 6 looks to be much the same in 2025. The Battlefield Labs test is an early pre-Alpha designed to test the game’s foundations. But leaked gameplay footage has already shed light on the direction the full Battlefield 6 release is heading. Every Class in Battlefield 6 Revealed so far Is it the same Classes again? Credit to EA Leaked Battlefield 6 Labs footage reveals four familiar Classes: Assault, Engineer, Support, and Recon. Like the Battlefield 2042 image I’ve posted above shows, Battlefield 6 looks to be a continuation of the popular Classes. Apart from Battlefield 1—which had Assault, Medic, Support, Scout, Pilot & Tanker, Cavalry, and Elite Classes—most Battlefield games use the same Classes. As we’ve covered, the Battlefield Labs pre-Alpha has already leaked. In-match gameplay footage clearly shows you can choose from Assault, Engineer, Support, and Recon. This doesn’t mean these are the final Classes though: Everything is subject to change between a pre-Alpha and a full release. Assault This is your typical Battlefield, on-foot infantry with automatic weapons designed to eliminate the opposition at close-to-medium distances. They get stuck in, offer limited healing properties, and are an all-round killer. Engineer An Engineer gets stuck into the technical and mechanical side of things. Repairing ally vehicles, sabotaging enemy vehicles, and using a full breadth of equipment to be as impactful as any other role. Support Your Support are your healers, the fastidious individuals scurrying around the Battlefield resupplying and restocking teammates. They can also hinder the enemy team with their unique equipment and are very important. Recon If you prefer to engage at long distances, pick off enemies, and remain unseen, Recon is the way for you. The role is known for Sniper Rifles and players capable of highlighting and identifying threats for the rest of their team. There’s plenty of time between now and the full Battlefield 6 release. We know Battlefield Labs is a testing ground and nothing more. We’ll have to wait and see, but are you happy to see Battlefield 6 stick to the same four Classes? Or should the shooter be more ambitious? For more Battlefield news, check out everything we know about Battlefield 6 Factions. SUBSCRIBE to our newsletter to receive the latest news and exclusive leaks every week! No Spam. Source link #Battlefield #ClassesEvery #Battlefield #Class Pelican News View the full article at [Hidden Content]

The Highs and Lows of ‘Edges of Ailey,’ the Whitney Museum’s New Exhibit The Highs and Lows of ‘Edges of Ailey,’ the Whitney Museum’s New Exhibit Dancers, vibrantly attired and nearly floating, skipped across the gallery floor at the Whitney Museum of American Art. With what at first seemed like a bow to the floor but was really a slow slide, they lowered with willful splendor into the splits. Their arms drifted out to either side with steely resolve to the Amy Winehouse song “Back to ******” and, upon rising, they stood with a hand to a hip. And then the dancing began. It got sweaty. There are many ways to honor the choreographer Alvin Ailey, the subject of “Edges of Ailey,” an exhibition at the Whitney that ended last week. But “Chorus” (2016) — a pop-up performance by Ralph Lemon with music by Kevin Beasley — was scintillating and sly as it grew in sonic and visual vibrancy. All the movement comes from 1970s and 1980s “Soul Train” videos found on YouTube. The history of that show and its prominent presentation of ****** artists, placed alongside Lemon’s five stellar dancers, made a splash. It crystallized that Ailey bling. Part of the performance programming that accompanied “Edges of Ailey,” this was a show within a show: a line dance that electrified the fifth-floor gallery, grounding the somewhat chaotic site of the exhibition, which focused on Ailey’s life and career. You could imagine “Chorus” making Ailey laugh. He always said dance was for everyone. “I believe that dance came from the people,” he said, “and that it should always be delivered back to the people.” Lemon pulled that off. The performance, just 10 minutes, created a flow of energy — like water, which was meaningful, too. Water is a motif that comes up again and again in Ailey’s dances, from “Streams” to “The River.” (The exhibition featured an installation piece called “River,” by Maren Hassinger, with steel chains and rope in a reference to the Middle Passage, when enslaved Africans were transported to the Americas.) The dance embodied so much; grief is held in the body, and through dance, can be released. It wasn’t always obvious how the performances that accompanied the exhibition fit into the lineage of Ailey. (The shows began in September and ended this month.) But Ailey was larger than life, and that allowed for creative freedom. The more unconventional responses were often more alluring than the traditional ones. Offerings related to the institution that Ailey built, Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater, came up short. Matthew Rushing, a former Ailey star serving as the company’s interim artistic director (Alicia Graf Mack takes over on July 1), presented “Sacred Songs,” a premiere meant to uplift that was instead engulfed by sentimentality. On paper, it wasn’t a bad idea: “Sacred Songs” is set to selections of gospel music that were originally performed as part of Ailey’s celebrated “Revelations,” but were later cut. Instead of using professional dancers, Rushing chose students from Ailey Extension, which offers classes to the general public. This nonprofessional cast — its focus and fortitude to get it right, at least at the Whitney — was the dance’s only saving grace. This is a spiritual work filled with perpetually reaching arms, furrowed eyebrows and sharp pelvic contractions. At least the earnestness displayed by the Extension performers held a sweet passion. But when “Sacred Songs” made its Ailey premiere later at New York City Center, the dancers in the main company embraced melodrama in such fervent ways that sincerity slipped away. In other programming, the Ailey company, showing brief excerpts, also missed the mark. Instead of presenting Ailey’s choreography in a different light — without, say, makeup and costumes, to show its bones — the dancers performed as if they were in a 2,000-seat theater. The exhibition proposed to reveal Ailey, not just the modern dance pioneer who choreographed “Revelations,” but the man. The dancers’ blinding smiles kept Ailey obscured, tightly packed into his usual box. The Ailey company of today can be seen as entertainment; but if you look a bit deeper, Alvin Ailey isn’t so far removed from some of today’s experimentalists. In “city of dancers — the eternal return of the same,” the choreographer Sarah Michelson staged her Ailey tribute, not at the Whitney but at Performance Space New York — formerly P.S. 122. Throughout the work, which was performed over two mornings, Michelson shared the stage with the dancer and choreographer Leslie Cuyjet, but also seemed to be making space for the ghosts in the room: Ailey or anybody with an unquenchable thirst for dance. “You learn something once, and it’s yours for life,” she says in the piece. “But first you have to become a dancer.” The day-in, day-out of a dancer’s life is something that is hard to truly grasp from the outside. In her biography of Ailey, Jennifer Dunning writes, “From early on, movement was the one medium through which he could honestly express his innermost truths.” In Dunning’s book, Charles Blackwell, a dancer who became one of the first ****** Broadway stage managers, talks about how Ailey’s work was always about people. “Everything was in the service of the emotions that he was dancing, or choreographing,” Dunning quotes him as saying. “It was not about showing off. It was always about what was being said. It was about tears and perspiration, just reproduction. Mankind continuing.” Perhaps that sentiment — being at the service of the thing — is the spiritual through line for certain dance artists of today. “let slip, hold sway,” a durational installation created by Okwui Okpokwasili and Peter Born, looks into hair, specifically a ****** woman’s hair, as a way to awaken memory. In one hypnotic passage, Bria Bacon transformed her body incrementally as microscopic shudders began to creep up her shoulder blades and shoot down her back with feverish intensity. It was gorgeously uncanny. Two veteran choreographers, Bill T. Jones and Jawole Willa Jo Zollar, showed up in spectacular ways. Jones, in his solo “Memory Piece: Mr. Ailey, Alvin … the un-Ailey?,” explored his divergence from Ailey’s brand of modern dance and the racism he faced as a ****** choreographer in a white, postmodern dance world. (The solo will be in his company’s New York Live Arts season in May.) Equally electric was Zollar in “LifeDance IV The Emperor … The Old Woman Persists,” a work for her and the dancer and singer Tendayi Kuumba. More than a dance-theater work, “LifeDance” was a spell. At one point, Zollar announced, “I need some help to take the patriarchy to the other side” and found a male volunteer in the audience to do just that. In her quest for the death of patriarchy, she wanted to free us all. It was a group effort — cathartic in all the right ways. Being in the presence of Zollar’s quietly ferocious energy, her taut vibrational pull, her wisdom, her strength was astounding. Just as experiential — and gutting — was Trajal Harrell’s powerful “Deathbed.” (When will the Ailey company commission him?) Harrell’s dance is built on speculation about the relationship between Katherine Dunham, the influential ****** choreographer, dancer and anthropologist, and the Japanese choreographer and dancer Tatsumi Hijikata, who is regarded as a founder of the postwar Japanese dance form Butoh. At one point Dunham and Hijikata shared a studio, a fact that Harrell discovered when he found himself, remarkably, at Dunham’s deathbed in 2006. At that time, Harrell didn’t know to ask her what that relationship was all about. In “Deathbed,” there are still no answers. But through Harrell’s weaving together of ritual and spirit, he achieves the kind of theatrical transcendence that turns grieving into a communal act. Everything was in the service of emotions. There was virtuosity in the dancers’ silken ease, but it was never showing off. Tears? Certainly. There Ailey was, standing in the shadows. Harrell was bringing feeling to dance, just as Ailey always did. Source link #Highs #Lows #Edges #Ailey #Whitney #Museums #Exhibit Pelican News View the full article at [Hidden Content]

Tesla stock tumbles over 10%, wiping out post-election gains as demand worries continue to weigh Tesla stock tumbles over 10%, wiping out post-election gains as demand worries continue to weigh Tesla stock (TSLA) fell more than 10% on Monday as another bearish call from Wall Street sent shares to their lowest level since the day before the presidential election and 50% from its record closing high of $479 seen on Dec. 17. In a note to clients on Monday, analysts at UBS lowered their price target on the stock to $225 from $259, citing lower delivery forecasts for the first quarter it sees resulting from softer demand for Tesla’s Model 3 and Model Y vehicles. The firm maintained a Sell rating on the stock. UBS now expects the company to deliver 367,000 cars in the first quarter, down from the 437,000 it said it had “plugged in as a placeholder” after Tesla’s fourth quarter results in late January. The firm now sees deliveries falling 5% over last year and 26% from the prior quarter in Q1, adding: “Our UBS Evidence Lab data shows low delivery times for the Model 3 and Model Y (generally within 2 weeks) in key markets which we believe is indicative of softer demand.” The stock was also pressured by news that shipments in China fell 49% from last year in February to the lowest level in almost three years. NasdaqGS – Nasdaq Real Time Price • USD As of 12:34:44 PM EDT. Market Open. With Monday’s drop, Tesla stock has now forfeited more than all of its post-election gains, with this decline another piece of the persistent unwind of the “Trump trade” that has defined market action in recent weeks. Tesla stock has dropped about 18% since the start of March alone. Still, the plunge has prompted some of Tesla’s biggest bulls to come out in defense of the name in recent days. Last Thursday, Wedbush analyst Dan Ives doubled down on his pro-Tesla views, calling the current slump a “gut check moment for the Tesla bulls (including ourselves).” Ives added Tesla to the firm’s “Best Ideas List” and reiterated his Outperform rating and $550 price target. He also noted this is not the first time Tesla has seen a drawdown of this magnitude, writing, “There have been a number of times in the Tesla story over the past decade that negative sentiment and Street worries have overshadowed the narrative of this unique disruptive global tech story.” Morgan Stanley analyst Adam Jonas also recently reiterated his bullish view on Tesla, forecasting shares will rise to $430 as the company diversifies into artificial intelligence and robotics. The analyst reinstated Tesla as a top pick for the auto sector. “Tesla’s softer auto deliveries are emblematic of a company in the transition from an automotive ‘pure play’ to a highly diversified play on AI and robotics,” wrote Jonas in early March. He added the company’s 2025 deliveries could decline year over year, but that this would be “creating an attractive entry point” for investors. Story Continues Just say no: Demonstrators during a protest of automaker billionaire CEO Elon Musk near a Tesla vehicle dealership on March 8 in Decatur, Ga. (AP Photo/Mike Stewart) · ASSOCIATED PRESS As Yahoo Finance’s Pras Subramanian recently pointed out, while new competition has eaten into Tesla’s sales, there is also the effect of CEO Elon Musk and his foray into politics. Musk became one of Trump’s key surrogates on the campaign trail in the final months of the 2024 election. Registration data shows Tesla car sales falling in Europe while the firing of government workers by the Musk-led Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) have prompted protests at showrooms across the country. Recent surveys show that many voters disapprove of Musk’s actions, with a Quinnipiac poll from late January finding that voters oppose Musk playing a prominent role in the Trump administration by a 53% to 39% margin. Tesla is expected to report its first quarter results on April 22. StockStory aims to help individual investors beat the market. Ines Ferre is a senior business reporter for Yahoo Finance. Follow her on X at @ines_ferre. Click here for the latest stock market news and in-depth analysis, including events that move stocks Read the latest financial and business news from Yahoo Finance Source link #Tesla #stock #tumbles #wiping #postelection #gains #demand #worries #continue #weigh Pelican News View the full article at [Hidden Content] For verified travel tips and real support, visit: [Hidden Content]

The Lord of the Rings – the current state of the franchise? The Lord of the Rings – the current state of the franchise? The Lord of the Rings, Tolkien’s legendary fantasy series, currently has a few projects in development: these span video games, films, and the continuation of the Amazon Prime series. The three Peter Jackson Lord of the Rings films were both critically, and commercially successful, but the newer Lord of the Rings material has struggled to step out of the shadow of the original Trilogy. Some cherish the Hobbit films but they never lived up to the Lord of the Rings trilogy for others. The Amazon Prime series, while its casting has been called “woke,” the acting and writing have been criticized even more than the original criticisms of “woke” casting. Despite this, I thought it was a fun watch. I will watch the third season when it is released. Then there’s the anime, the Lord of the Rings: The War of the Rohirrim. The anime was under two hours long and is a great family-friendly title that I’d recommend to anyone wanting a wholesome Lord of the Rings experience. The main and most mysterious news for Lord of the Rings fans has been the announcement of a new film being directed by Peter Jackson named The Lord of the Rings: The Hunt for Gollum which will have many of the original cast returning over 20 years after the original trilogy. For me, this was a shocking announcement. The Hunt for Gollum When I was a kid, the Lord of the Rings movies felt like the most epic, inspiring pieces of media I had ever seen. I was a huge fan as soon as I first watched The Fellowship of the Ring in the cinema. I only had a vague idea of what the Lord of the Rings was before seeing it in the cinema that day. I was about ten years old and Harry Potter had been more my thing up to that point. However, after watching Fellowship, I metaphorically threw Harry’s wand away and picked up the one ring. The Lord of the Rings had hooked me, and although the movies don’t seem as epic to me today, I still am a keen Tolkien fan. In the years that followed the release of the original trilogy, I often thought about the possibility of unique Lord of the Rings film projects that would explore different storylines in the Middle-earth universe. Eventually, the Hobbit films got made and when I first saw the first film in that trilogy I was slightly disappointed. I didn’t think it captured the magic of the original trilogy. Anyway, the point that I’m trying to make, is that now, finally we will get some unique storylines turned into films. My younger self would have been excited about this. My current self is happy about it. However, there are still some unanswered questions. We know that the new film will explore a ******* that is shown in The Fellowship of the Ring. That is, when Gandalf searches for Gollum around the time Gollum is tortured by Sauron and reveals the name of the Shire. So, does this mean some of the original cast will return? With modern technology that is certainly a possibility. Will the films go for a similar style and use similar themes? I guess we will find out in the coming months. Video games – History There are some great Lord of the Rings video games. The first that got widespread media and fan attention, and also arguably the best, are LOTR The Two Towers, and LOTR Return of the King for PS2, Xbox, and Gamecube. These games used animations from the movies and looked exceedingly realistic. For me, they showcase the power of their respective systems better than most other titles. The gameplay is great hack-and-slash arcade-style action. Although, the games could also be described as action RPGs. There’s leveling up, and new moves to unlock, but then the games are level-based and exploration isn’t really a gameplay element. The character follows a set path. Regardless of this, I think The Two Towers in particular is highly underrated. The GBA versions of these games are also worth mentioning, they are great Diablo clones. The next few Lord of the Rings console games such as The Lord of the Rings Conquest, and The Lord of the Rings War in the North were slash-em-up action games. The first is a similar game to Star Wars Battlefront, and the latter is a PS3/Xbox 360 attempted upgrade of the gameplay found in LOTR: TTT and LOTR: TROTK from the previous generation. Both games were average experiences. Around this time Lego Lord of the Rings started releasing and these are like all the Lego games. They combine simple puzzles with platforming and collecting. If they’re your kind of game then that is great, but I really don’t find the gameplay loop addictive or rewarding. Middle-earth: Shadow of Mordor was released in 2017. It used a very similar engine to the Assassin’s Creed games that were released around that time, but it also had an exclusive ‘nemesis’ system where the Orcs that the player comes across have a set hierarchy and there is much interaction between the player and the Orcs in the game. I haven’t experienced it fully, but the game is great. Imagine the combat and platforming of Assassin’s Creed mixed with an addictive, unique way to remember previous enemy encounters. Shadow of Mordor, the sequel is a similar great game. Video games – New Titles That brings us to the latest game. Named after the corrupted Hobbit, Gollum, was released May 23, 2023 on PS5, PS4, Xbox Series S/X, and PC. The game flopped. It must have had issues during development since the game was full of bugs and lacked solid gameplay which resulted in a poor quality experience. I haven’t played it. I would have given it a chance but the Switch version never released. The design of Gollum looked unique and I’m sure the concepts that they first developed were great. The art style may have been a breath of fresh air for the Lord of the Rings franchise, but I guess things never came together for the project to succeed. Tales of the Shire is a title that will be released on all current major platforms. It’s been delayed twice over the last year. It’s now due to be released on July 29. The game looks like an Animal Crossing-style social simulation. The delay may turn out to be good for the title. As Miyamoto is often misquoted as saying, “A delayed game is eventually good, a bad game is bad forever.” If you’ve ever enjoyed playing The Sims you might like This entry in the Lord of the Rings game library. I’m personally really excited about this title. I think the idea of playing a game that you can relax with, and is set in the Lord of the Rings universe with all its interesting lore, is very appealing. Get ready to trim some Kingsfoil in the heat of the summer! The last game that I will mention is The Lord of the Rings: Return to Moria. This title is a survival game coming to PlayStation, Xbox, and PC. It centers around a group of Dwarves who are trying to retake Moria. Be prepared to do a lot of crafting and possibly some hunting. Amazon Prime- Rings of Power Season 3 The Rings of Power series has received detailed and lengthy criticism from most YouTubers who discuss fantasy franchises. The “woke” nature of its casting has received backlash mainly because Lord of the Rings fans argue that people of different races should be cast appropriately, such as those from the south of Middle-earth having darker skin, rather than the series just having a completely random choice of ethnicity for each character. The series has also taken flack for bad acting, bad writing, and even bad special effects. You’d think that the most expensive streaming show ever would have achieved at least some critical acclaim. However, I think that the show is still enjoyable if you are a Tolkien fan, and don’t mind the “woke” casting. Season 3 of Rings of Power is rumored to arrive in August 2026. We still have quite a wait until its release. With The Hunt for Gollum releasing in 2027, the main Lord of the Rings media to release in 2025 are Tales of the Shire, and Return to Moria. Let’s hope that these two titles can capture the magic of Tolkien. The future’s bright The Lord of the Rings franchise has many upcoming projects to be excited about. The series has had few releases since the Peter Jackson trilogy and some would argue that has been good for the brand. The Two Towers and Return of the King video games were great experiences, probably only rivaled by Shadow of Mordor and Shadow of War in terms of the best Lord of the Rings video games. We have Tales of the Shire and Return to Moria to look forward to this year. No doubt there are other games planned for major consoles. The video games of Lord of the Rings has a bright future. In terms of film, The Hunt for Gollum announcement was a pleasant surprise for many LOTR fans. There’s some fear that it will be milking the franchise dry and may flop and turn the Lord of the Rings into Star Wars in terms of how damaged that IP has become. However, this stand-alone film is being developed by Jackson and Boyens from the original trilogy. I can’t wait until it releases. I really enjoyed War of the Rohirrim and feel more standalone entries could be really good for the fans. Daniel Leal Contributor Daniel’s an avid Zelda fan who also likes the odd game of Smash. When not playing or writing about games he’s usually reading or writing about human evolution, hoping to one day gain a doctorate on the origins of language. His interests in gaming are broad but he loves a good Metroidvania or action RPG. Source link #Lord #Rings #current #state #franchise Pelican News View the full article at [Hidden Content]

Peter Kyle sets stage for making tech work Peter Kyle sets stage for making tech work During his presentation at TechUK’s Tech Policy conference in London, science and technology minister Peter Kyle unveiled investments, reforms and appointments to drive innovation and boost the economy. Technology is set to play a pivotal role in the government’s industrial strategy called Invest 2035. The government’s greenpaper on a 10-year industrial strategy notes that the economy has faced significant shocks in recent years and has had a poor productivity record over the past decade and a half, consistently investing less than its international peers, and lagging on the performance of city regions outside London and the South-East. Kyle said: “Everywhere you see, there is an imbalance of power in this country which has – for too long – made it impossible to imagine a better future for Britain. To deliver our Plan for Change, we have to shift the balance of power away from stagnation and old ideas towards innovation and opportunity, and to the bold people building a new future for Britain.” AI, semiconductors, cyber security and quantum technologies are among the promising technology developments that could drive growth in the *** economy. But direct support, which includes public sector funding, is likely to be needed to stimulate these sectors. The government’s greenpaper on its industrial strategy, published in October 2024, calls for a targeted strategy where the government takes a deliberate and targeted approach towards growth-driving sectors and places. The approach requires temporary government support to scale up industries, particularly those with potential for global competitiveness. The greenpaper urges the government to focus on a range of technologies and their commercialisation, with a portfolio approach that backs smaller, less proven and more disruptive businesses alongside larger, well-established businesses. The aim of such support is to provide a stimulus to enable innovative businesses and startups to get the funding they require to scale up. Direct government intervention is seen as a way to reduce uncertainty and support the development of critical sector-specific knowledge, and crowd in private capital to growth-driving sectors. Direct government support, according to the greenpaper, also encourages competitive and innovative business ecosystems, particularly in industries with low market dynamism and high barriers to entry, and can be used to identify the importance of strong supply chain linkages between sectors. One example of such direct support is the Quantum Missions Pilot, which aims to accelerate quantum computing and quantum networking technologies. During his TechUK speech, Kyle announced winners of Innovate ***’s Quantum Missions Pilot, each of whom is set to receive a share of £12m to help accelerate the real-world impact of quantum computing and quantum networking technologies. The government also said it will be investing £23m in edge telecoms research and deployment to expand mobile coverage for people and businesses across Britain. As Computer Weekly has previously reported, during his TechUK speech, Kyle announced an overhaul in how AI experiments and other digital projects are funded in the public sector. The government hopes the overhaul will simplify the process to cut down waste in taxpayer funding. He also named David Willetts, who served as science minister from 2010 to 2014, as the first chair of the Regulatory Innovation Office (RIO). The RIO’s goal is to ensure the ***’s regulatory regime can keep pace with innovation. Source link #Peter #Kyle #sets #stage #making #tech #work Pelican News View the full article at [Hidden Content]

Live Performance in New York City: Here’s What to See This Spring Live Performance in New York City: Here’s What to See This Spring Broadway OPERATION MINCEMEAT A sneaky compassion lies at the heart of this ****** of a show, a deliciously eccentric London import that won the 2024 Olivier Award for best new musical. Starring the original West End cast, it’s a riff on a bizarre true story from World War II, when British Intelligence, keen to misdirect the Germans, dressed up a dead man as a Royal Marines major, planted a fake invasion plan on him and dropped him in the sea for the enemy to find. Through June 15 at the Golden Theater. (All theater listings by LAURA COLLINS-HUGHES) BUENA VISTA SOCIAL CLUB This jukebox musical about the Cuban artists who made the Grammy Award-winning 1997 album of the title isn’t straight biography. Developed and directed by Saheem Ali (“**** Ham”), it uses real people and events as a jumping-off point for its storytelling. Rooted in the recording sessions, and choreographed by Patricia Delgado and the Tony winner Justin ***** (“Illinoise”), it was an Off Broadway hit last season for Atlantic Theater Company. Performances begin Feb. 21 at the Gerald Schoenfeld Theater. OTHELLO Denzel Washington made a Broadway box-office hit out of “Julius Caesar” two decades ago. On the big screen, he has played Macbeth. Now he takes on Shakespeare’s Othello — the honorable general and smitten newlywed. Jake Gyllenhaal is his foil as the perfidious Iago, who goads Othello into unreasoning jealousy with lies about his beloved Desdemona (Molly Osborne). Directed by Kenny Leon, a Tony winner for his revival of “A Raisin in the Sun,” which also starred Washington. Feb. 24-June 8 at the Barrymore Theater. PURPOSE Fresh off his Tony win for “Appropriate,” the playwright Branden Jacobs-Jenkins returns with a new drama about the members of a famous, albeit fictional, ****** political dynasty in Chicago, reckoning with history, morality and legacy as they gather for a celebration. Phylicia Rashad directs this Steppenwolf Theater production, whose ensemble cast includes Alana Arenas, Glenn Davis, Jon Michael Hill, LaTanya Richardson Jackson, Harry Lennix and another 2024 Tony winner, Kara Young. Feb. 25-July 6 at the Helen Hayes Theater. GLENGARRY GLEN ROSS David Mamet’s luxuriantly crude, bare-knuckled real estate drama, which won the 1984 Pulitzer Prize, gets its third Broadway revival. Kieran Culkin, last on Broadway a decade ago in “This Is Our Youth,” stars as Richard Roma — the Al Pacino role in the movie adaptation — opposite Bob Odenkirk, Bill Burr, Michael McKean, Donald Webber Jr., Howard W. Overshown and John Pirruccello. Patrick Marber, a 2023 Tony winner for his production of “Leopoldstadt,” directs. How’s that for a lead? March 10-May 31 at the Palace Theater. THE PICTURE OF DORIAN GRAY Theatergoing admirers of the HBO drama “Succession” love to ascribe its savvy artistry partly to the considerable stage chops among its cast. Now Sarah Snook, the *********** actor who played Shiv Roy — older sister to Kieran Culkin’s Roman — makes her Broadway debut in Kip Williams’s intricately high-tech retelling of Oscar Wilde’s classic novel. Snook takes on all 26 characters, a feat that won her raves, and a 2024 Olivier Award, in the London run of this Sydney Theater Company production. March 10-June 15 at the Music Box Theater. BOOP! THE MUSICAL The ******-and-white 1930s cartoon character Betty Boop time-travels to a richly chromatic future in this new show, with Jasmine Amy Rogers making her Broadway debut in the title role, and Faith Prince and Stephen DeRosa among the supporting cast. Directed and choreographed by the Tony-winning Jerry Mitchell, the show has a book by Bob Martin (“The Drowsy Chaperone”), music by David Foster, lyrics by Susan Birkenhead and a set by David Rockwell. Performances begin March 11 at the Broadhurst Theater. JOHN PROCTOR IS THE VILLAIN In Arthur Miller’s “The Crucible,” a skewering of McCarthyism set amid the witch trials of 17th-century Massachusetts, John Proctor is meant to be the hero. This #MeToo play by Kimberly Belflower turns that presumption on its head, with a group of contemporary high school girls who detect similarities between Miller’s putative good guy and the men in their own world. Sadie Sink (“Stranger Things”) stars; Danya Taymor, a Tony winner for “The Outsiders,” directs. March 20-June 22 at the Booth Theater. STRANGER THINGS: THE FIRST SHADOW Set in Hawkins, Ind., in 1959, this Olivier-winning sensory spectacle of a play is a prequel to the supernatural Netflix series “Stranger Things.” Directed by Stephen Daldry, it has a script by Kate Trefry, a writer on the hit series, and an original story by Trefry, Jack Thorne and the Duffer brothers, who created the series. Transferring from London’s West End, where it opened in 2023, the show is recommended for ages 12 and up. Performances begin March 28 at the Marquis Theater. REAL WOMEN HAVE CURVES: THE MUSICAL Josefina López’s 1990 play has never been as well known as the 2002 film it spawned, which starred America Ferrera in her breakthrough role. Now both of those form the bases of this new musical about Ana (Tatianna Córdoba), an American teenager in 1980s Los Angeles trying to reconcile her aspirations for herself with her obligations to her undocumented immigrant family. Directed and choreographed by the Tony winner Sergio Trujillo, with music and lyrics by Joy Huerta and Benjamin Velez. Performances begin April 1 at the James Earl Jones Theater. DEAD OUTLAW The hapless Elmer McCurdy wasn’t much good as an Old West criminal, but the real-life, sideshow-attraction saga of his mummified corpse made for a rollicking sleeper-hit musical comedy Off Broadway last year. Once again starring Andrew Durand as Elmer, playing dead like nobody’s business, it’s a country-tinged tale with a conscience from the book writer Itamar Moses, the composer-lyricist David Yazbek and the director David Cromer — Tony winners all for “The Band’s Visit” — and the composer-lyricist Erik Della Penna. Performances begin April 12 at the Longacre Theater. GODDESS The director Saheem Ali returns to a passion project with this musical inspired by the myth of Marimba, the goddess of music, which Ali heard as a child growing up in Kenya. Conceived by Ali, who directed the premiere at Berkeley Repertory Theater in 2022, the show has a book by Jocelyn Bioh (“Jaja’s African Hair Braiding”), music and lyrics by Michael Thurber and choreography by Darrell Grand Moultrie, all of whom made “Merry Wives” with Ali for Shakespeare in the Park in 2021. April 29-June 1 at the Public Theater. GHOSTS Nothing against nepo babies, truly, but the most unignorable thing about Lincoln Center Theater’s casting of this Henrik Ibsen drama is the critical mass of them. Lily Rabe (daughter of Jill Clayburgh and David Rabe) stars alongside Ella Beatty (daughter of Annette Bening and Warren Beatty), Levon Hawke (son of Uma Thurman and Ethan Hawke) and her own partner, Hamish Linklater (son of the renowned vocal coach Kristin Linklater). Billy Crudup, who completes the cast of this Mark O’Rowe adaptation, is the odd man out. Jack O’Brien directs. Through April 13 at the Mitzi E. Newhouse Theater. BROOKLYN ACADEMY OF MUSIC Returning to form as a cultural hotspot, BAM has a blazing London import in the Almeida Theater’s Olivier-winning production of “A Streetcar Named Desire” (Feb. 28-April 6). Starring Paul Mescal as Stanley Kowalski and Patsy Ferran as Blanche DuBois, it’s directed by Rebecca Frecknall, whose revival of “Cabaret” is currently on Broadway. Then comes “Macbeth in Stride” (April 15-April 27). Written by the Obie Award winner Whitney White, and performed by her and an ensemble, it uses Lady Macbeth as a frame for examining ****** womanhood and ambition. A live band plays White’s gospel, rock, R&B and pop score. Harvey Theater at BAM Strong. AMERIKIN What if, to be accepted into a friendly local club you were eager to join, you had to pass a DNA test? And what if you were mistaken in thinking that you would ace it? In this play by Chisa Hutchinson, the exclusive group is made up of white supremacists, and their would-be recruit (Daniel Abeles) is a new father only now learning about his own family tree. ***** King Carroll directs for Primary Stages. March 1-April 13 at 59E59 Theaters. WINE IN THE WILDERNESS In Harlem in 1964, a model (Olivia Washington) sits for a painter (Grantham Coleman) who means to depict her as a negative example in his otherwise idealizing triptych on ****** femininity. This Alice Childress play had its premiere on public television in 1969. Now LaChanze makes her New York directing debut with it — a continuation of her championing of Childress, the author of “Trouble in Mind,” the play LaChanze starred in on Broadway three years ago. March 6-April 13, Classic Stage Company. VANYA Among the recent spate of stagings of Chekhov’s “Uncle Vanya,” this is the one with Andrew Scott performing every role. Adapted by Simon Stephens as an eight-character solo piece and created with Scott, this is more than a party trick. It’s a cheeky, nimble, intimate interpretation that’s also a workout for the imagination. Sam Yates’s Olivier-winning production has been filmed for National Theater Live. But a camera can’t convey the feeling of experiencing it in the moment, let alone in a room as human-scale as this downtown space. March 10-May 11 at the Lucille Lortel Theater. THE CHERRY ORCHARD Humor is to the ***** in the Donmar Warehouse’s immersive production of this Chekhov classic, which wowed London audiences last year. Directed by Benedict Andrews, who brought his acclaimed production of “A Streetcar Named Desire” to Brooklyn in 2016, it stars Nina Hoss (“Tár”) as the entitled aristocrat Ranevskaya, an estate owner drowning in debt, opposite Adeel Akhtar as Lopakhin, the socially ascendant merchant who proposes a solution. March 26-April 20 at St. Ann’s Warehouse. EURYDICE Maya Hawke (sister of Levon) plays the title role in this revival of Sarah Ruhl’s piercingly beautiful, comically offbeat retelling of the myth of Orpheus and Eurydice. Directed by Les Waters, who staged the play breathtakingly almost two decades ago, it is about love and connection, mortality and memory. When the just-married Eurydice dies, she descends in an elevator to the underworld, where her tender father takes care of her while Orpheus pines. May 13-June 22 at Signature Theater. LUNAR ECLIPSE Reed Birney and Lisa Emery portray a long-married Kentucky couple, watching the summer sky and talking through the night, in this new two-hander by Donald Margulies, who won a Pulitzer in 2000 for “Dinner With Friends,” another play about enduring coupledom starring Emery. In “Lunar Eclipse,” Birney is reprising his role from a 2023 production at Shakespeare & Company in Western Massachusetts. Kate Whoriskey (“Clyde’s”) directs this staging, an Off Broadway premiere for Second Stage Theater. May 14-June 22 at Pershing Square Signature Center. Pop, Jazz and Country FKA TWIGS The English avant-pop goddess FKA twigs remakes the club in her own image on her latest album, “Eusexua,” which she has described as “a love letter to how dance music makes me feel.” With a background in both ballet and opera, FKA twigs — whose real name is Tahliah Debrett Barnett — approaches her electronic compositions with a highbrow experimentalist’s sense of daring, but the 11 tracks of “Eusexua” are among the most straightforward and pop-oriented of her career. With her nimble, flinty falsetto leading the way, the 37-year old puts her own spin on the techno, garage and drum and bass sounds she grew up with while unearthing dormant desires and articulating her own pleasure principle. “Eusexua” is a record meant to be experienced in a crowd full of dancing, sweaty bodies — an opportunity twigs will offer when she takes it on tour this spring. April 3 and 4 at Knockdown Center, Queens. (LINDSAY ZOLADZ) DARKSIDE The shape-shifting electro-psychedelia group Darkside began as the electronic producer Nicolás Jaar and the multi-instrumentalist Dave Harrington, two accomplished, wide-ranging musicians who started playing together in 2011 as students at Brown. On their third LP, the immersive “Nothing,” the band includes the drummer Tlacael Esparza, who is likewise adept at playing just about every style imaginable. That fluidity gives “Nothing” a thrilling unpredictability — and a license to explore a sonic cosmos that encompasses liquid funk, airy ambience and sudden spurts of garage rock, among other sounds. Esparza’s anchor also allows Darkside to indulge its inner jam band, a development that may unlock something new in the group’s performances. March 21 and 22 at Brooklyn Steel, Brooklyn. (L.Z.) MEGAN MORONEY Looking for an experience that allows you to wallow in the limitless depths of your sorrow? There is one easy solution for the relentless masochism that unites the brokenhearted: the country singer Megan Moroney, who brings her Am I Okay? Tour to New York in March. Moroney has had a banner couple of years, releasing albums and songs about heavy frustration and even heavier regret at a Drake-like pace. She has a soothing voice, but it’s a ******* horse for the kind of angst that most musicians — hell, most people — are too scared to traffic in. So come along and bathe in the misery: Maybe you’ll find someone who will hold your hand while you cling to theirs. March 26 and 27 at Radio City Music Hall, Manhattan. (JON CARAMANICA) CÉCILE MCLORIN SALVANT “She falls in love. She eats the guy. She dies.” That’s how the singer, composer, lyricist and visual artist Cécile McLorin Salvant sums up “Ogresse,” the music-theater work she’ll bring to Zankel Hall in May in its latest iteration. “Ogresse” is a fairy tale-inspired story of a monster who’s conquered by love, with a score that ranges across jazz, chamber music and more. McLorin also headlines Carnegie Hall in March with a nominally more conventional jazz concert: a program of ballads backed by a mini-orchestra, the Knights. But the arrangements are by Darcy James Argue, whose compositions for his own 18-piece Secret Society big band bristle with ambition; the pianist Sullivan Fortner, McLorin’s longtime collaborator and a master of splintered, polytonal harmonies, will also join her. McLorin’s supple voice can radiate innocence, yet she’s anything but naïve. Her versions of jazz standards promise to be as adventurous as her ever-changing eyewear. March 27 at Carnegie Hall, Manhattan; and May 21 at Zankel Hall, Manhattan, (JON PARELES) Classical STILE ANTICO Palestrina, that master of gleaming polyphony, was born 500 years ago. The superb vocal ensemble Stile Antico has already honored the anniversary with a recording, sung with lushness and focus, and in March, Miller Theater will present the group in a program based on the album. At the center is a sizable helping of Palestrina, of course, rounded out with pieces by other composers active in Rome during his time, including Orlande de Lassus and Tomás Luis de Victoria — and even a premiere, by Cheryl Frances-Hoad. March 29 at Church of St. Mary the Virgin, Manhattan. (All classical listings by ZACHARY WOOLFE) PATRICIA KOPATCHINSKAJA The violinist Patricia Kopatchinskaja, whose performances can send jolts through even the most well-trod pieces, has a far more active career in Europe than in America. So her debut with the New York Philharmonic, as the soloist in Stravinsky’s elegantly bristling Violin Concerto, is not to be missed, particularly since she’s appearing alongside the stylish yet vigorous conductor Jakub Hrusa, who also leads Brahms’s First Symphony. Jessie Montgomery, who composed a bit of the cycle “The Elements” for the Philharmonic a couple of years ago, opens the program with a full work of her own, “Chemiluminescence.” April 9-11 at David Geffen Hall, Lincoln Center. LONG PLAY FESTIVAL For years, the Bang on a Can Marathon was an annual, open-eared immersion in contemporary music. Since 2022, the marathon’s energy and variety has sprawled over a weekend and a borough, with a burst of performances at spaces around Brooklyn. Among the offerings this year are pieces by the Bang on a Can founders, Michael Gordon, David Lang and Julia Wolfe; a premiere by Henry Threadgill; Anthony Braxton’s “Composition No. 19 (For 100 Tubas)”; Nico Muhly’s harp cycle “The Street”; the pianist Adam Tendler playing John Cage; the elite guitar duo of Mary Halvorson and Bill Frisell; and a celebration of Terry Riley’s 90th birthday. May 2-4, various performance spaces in Brooklyn. PIERRE-LAURENT AIMARD His specialty is modernism, but there are few cooler, more technically flawless guides to a wide range of repertory than the pianist Pierre-Laurent Aimard. At Zankel Hall, he’ll play a formidable program of fantasias — spanning some 400 years — by Jan Pieterszoon Sweelinck, C.P.E. Bach, Mozart, Beethoven, Chopin and Elliott Carter (the brooding, unsettled “Night Fantasies”). He’ll cap the recital with a genuine rarity: Ives’s “The Celestial Railroad,” based on a Nathaniel Hawthorne story and featuring material from the better-known Second Piano Sonata and Fourth Symphony. (Concertgoers will have a tough choice that afternoon, as the English Concert will be performing Handel’s “Giulio Cesare” in Stern Auditorium at the same time.) May 4, Zankel Hall at Carnegie Hall. ‘THE QUEEN OF SPADES’ It used to be that decades might pass at the Metropolitan Opera between runs of Tchaikovsky’s “Queen of Spades,” a seething tale of obsession, madness and gambling. Happily, the work is increasingly being treated as core repertory, returning this season after an appearance just before the pandemic. Keri-Lynn Wilson, who in 2022 made a strong impression leading Shostakovich’s “Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk,” conducts a cast that includes the tenor Brian Jagde, the soprano Sonya Yoncheva, the baritones Igor Golovatenko and Alexey Markov and, as an aging countess who knows a dark secret about playing cards, the veteran mezzo Violeta Urmana. May 23-June 7 at the Metropolitan Opera, Lincoln Center. TWYLA THARP DANCE Tharp is celebrating her 60th year of making dances. (And what dances they have been!) Her season at New York City Center pairs “Slacktide,” her first work to Philip Glass since her masterpiece “In the Upper Room” (1986), with “Diabelli” (1998), a vivid exploration of American classicism that is a masterpiece, too — albeit one rarely seen. The dance set to Beethoven’s “Diabelli Variations” opens with swinging arms, skips and gallops; it blossoms in complexity and mood as humor and physical intelligence build and layer, creating a wonderfully witty ride. March 12-16 at New York City Center. (GIA KOURLAS) PAGEANT SPRING 2025 This artist-run space has announced its spring season — “The Rite of Spring, My Right to Spring” — which has all the makings of a breath of fresh air, fittingly full of pageantry. Big theaters have their charm, but smaller spaces are where imaginations are born, where you see what artists are made of. Pageant’s annual gala, set for April 19, is the best show in town; the regular season opens on March 6. The runs come and go in two-day bursts, including evenings by promising young dance artists like Neva Guido and Ella Dawn, so catch what you can. These explorations may run the gamut — as its founders say, Pageant programs artists, not works — but a questing spirit is always intact. That’s the Pageant way. March 6-May 23 at Pageant, Brooklyn. (G.K.) Ayodele Casel.Credit…Matthew Murphy AYODELE CASEL The exuberance of this joyful, musically sophisticated tap dancer cannot be overstated. Nor can her enthusiasm for ’90s hip-hop, the music that she and other dancers of her generation practiced to and took class to while finding their place in the tap world. Casel was partial to the Fugees, Nas, Craig Mack. “It was formative,” she said, and “it was easy to tap dance to because it swung. It swung in a way that we dance to jazz — easily.” In her upcoming work, directed by Torya Beard, Casel plans, in part, to explore the parallel between hip-hop and tap. “There was something about those two things colliding at the same time that spoke to each other,” she said, “in a deeper way than how it was talked about.” May 28-June 8 at the Joyce Theater. (G.K.) BATSHEVA DANCE COMPANY The choreographer Ohad Naharin and Batsheva, the company he reshaped into global prominence, have often attracted controversy — less for their sensuality, directness or inhibition-flouting eccentricity than by association with their home country, Israel. A U.S. tour of Naharin’s latest work, “Momo,” was postponed after the Oct. 7 attacks and ensuing war in Gaza; now it arrives at the Brooklyn Academy of Music. Set largely to music by Laurie Anderson and the Kronos Quartet, “Momo” is in a sense two overlapping works: a slow, masculine quartet that incorporates rock climbing; and a quicker ensemble piece that involves some parody of ballet. The doubling forces you to accept that you can’t process all the information at once: a milder, controlled version of the lesson that events outside the work are always making. March 6-8 at the Brooklyn Academy of Music. (BRIAN SEIBERT) BILL T. JONES/ARNIE ZANE COMPANY Like many Americans, Bill T. Jones is trying to understand what world we are living in. His way of processing is to make a work of dance theater. “People, Places & Things,” one of two programs in his company’s spring season, looks at the plight of stateless people, political upheaval and concepts of freedom. The soundtrack is drawn from Jones’s youth in the turbulent 1960s. Now 73, he has also been thinking about his own place in the world. The other program is a solo made in response to “Edges of Ailey,” the recent Whitney Museum exhibition about Alvin Ailey. In “Memory Piece: Mr. Ailey, Alvin … the un-Ailey?,” Jones ruminates with characteristic frankness on his relationship to his choreographer forebear, ****** dance, and the largely white milieu of postmodernism. May 15-24 at New York Live Arts, Manhattan (B.S.) Source link #Live #Performance #York #City #Heres #Spring Pelican News View the full article at [Hidden Content] For verified travel tips and real support, visit: [Hidden Content]

Dozens injured after fireball erupts when oil tanker, cargo ship collide in North Sea – USA TODAY Dozens injured after fireball erupts when oil tanker, cargo ship collide in North Sea – USA TODAY Dozens injured after fireball erupts when oil tanker, cargo ship collide in North Sea USA TODAYThirty-two casualties brought ashore and vessels ablaze after collision in North Sea – live The GuardianStricken oil tanker is ‘essential for US national security’: US-flagged vessel supplies military and was carry Daily MailTanker and cargo vessel collide off *** coast, coastguard says CNN International Source link #Dozens #injured #fireball #erupts #oil #tanker #cargo #ship #collide #North #Sea #USA #TODAY Pelican News View the full article at [Hidden Content]

Asus launches air-purifying monitors starting at $129 — 27-inch and 34-inch models retail for $159 and $359 Asus launches air-purifying monitors starting at $129 — 27-inch and 34-inch models retail for $159 and $359 Earlier this morning, Asus launched a trio of VU Air Ionizer series monitors: the 23.8-inch IPS panel Asus VU249HFI-W, the 27-inch IPS Asus VU279HFI-W, and the 34-inch VA Asus VU34WCIP-W. All VU Air Ionizer series monitors have a no-filter “VU Air Ionizer” that Asus claims can clear up to 90% of airborne dust and pollutants from an effective workspace coverage area of 1m³. Though we can certainly see how this can be useful for users in areas with poor air quality, the actual effectiveness of air ionizers as air purifiers is a hotly debated topic. The two smaller IPS monitors of the Asus VU Air Ionizer series have near-identical specifications. Both target a standard 16:9 1080p resolution at up to 100 Hz on their IPS panels. Meanwhile, the 34-inch VA panel Asus VU34WCIP-W monitor employs a 3440 x 1440 21:9 Ultrawide resolution and aspect ratio but still targets the same 100 Hz refresh and 1 ms MPRT response time. The VA monitor additionally operates at 300 nits brightness instead of the 250 nits on the IPS monitor, but realistically, none of these are HDR-class displays. However, the VA panel monitor is sure to have the best contrast due to VA’s per-pixel dimming, a trait shared with market-leading OLEDs. Asus VU Air Ionizor Monitor Specifications Swipe to scroll horizontally Model Name Monitor Size and Aspect Ratio Monitor Resolution Refresh Rate Contrast Ratio Brightness Panel Type Asus VU249HFI-W 23.8-inch 16:9 Widescreen 1920 x 1080 100 Hz VRR 1300:1 250 nits In-Panel Switching (IPS) panel Asus VU279HFI-W 27-inch 16:9 Widescreen 1920 x 1080 100 Hz VRR 1300:1 250 nits In-Panel Switching (IPS) panel Asus VU34WCIP-W 34-inch 21:9 Ultrawide 3440 x 1440 100 Hz VRR 3000:1 300 nits Vertical Alignment (VA) panel Unfortunately, historically, VA panels do not share all their traits with market-leading OLEDs. Effectively, VA panels are understood to be an intermediate between TN’s lower pricing and IPS’s superior color reproduction. They tend to have a slower pixel response time (higher motion blur) than either of those standards. Improvements to VA panels over time have resulted in displays more favorably comparable to good IPS monitors, but outside of high-contrast scenes, IPS still typically looks better across the board. According to the official specifications provided by Asus, these three monitors should have identical 100 Hz refresh rates, a 1 ms MPRT response time, and “16.7M display colors.” However, the VA panels’ downsides are worth noting, even if Asus seems confident in the 34-inch Asus VU34WCIP-W model’s image quality. (Image credit: Asus) At 100 Hz, though, any reasonable interpretation of 1 ms MPRT response time should still yield a respectable degree of clarity for the refresh rate. 100 Hz seems to be a particularly good fit for the 34-inch model as well, considering just how demanding modern games can still be at 3440 x 1440—and all the monitors come with VRR Adaptive Sync support starting from 48 Hz. Get Tom’s Hardware’s best news and in-depth reviews, straight to your inbox. Finally, it’s worth noting the pricing of these monitors since they’re all already available for purchase. With the Asus VU249HFI-W starting at just $129.99, the Asus VU279HFI-W starting at $159.99, and the Asus VU34WCIP-W leading the series at $359.99, these are some pretty affordable entry-level monitors with a pleasant gimmick. They all also come with a free month of Adobe Creative Cloud. Source link #Asus #launches #airpurifying #monitors #starting #27inch #34inch #models #retail Pelican News View the full article at [Hidden Content]

Miriam Miller Steps Into the Spotlight in ‘Swan Lake’ at City Ballet Miriam Miller Steps Into the Spotlight in ‘Swan Lake’ at City Ballet Elegance has a way of pouring out of Miriam Miller. Her arms open like wings, her fingertips part like petals. At 5 foot 10, with long legs and an elastic back, she has the kind of line that goes on for days. But a body isn’t everything in ballet. What makes Miller so striking isn’t what you see but what you instinctively feel: her aura. Resolute yet plush, her presence has a quiet command and, within that, an almost casual confidence. At New York City Ballet, where she was recently promoted to principal dancer, Miller, 28, has that rare ability to dance onstage as if she were singing through the steps in an open meadow. “I don’t love doing ballets that are performative to the audience,” she said. “I like it when it’s more internal, and it’s the audience looking in on you and seeing you approach and explore.” Over the past couple of years she has become her own dancer — not Miller dancing someone else’s part, but Miller being herself. On Thursday, she makes her debut in the dual role of Odette-Odile in “Swan Lake,” with Chun Wai Chan as her Siegfried. The weight of carrying this ballet, for any dancer, is both a technical and emotional feat. Timing is everything. Miller’s consistency has caught up to her beauty. And she is a swan. Miller has danced with City Ballet for 10 years, beginning with an apprenticeship that just months in saw her making a debut as Titania in George Balanchine’s “A Midsummer Night’s Dream.” Even at a company like City Ballet where debuts come out of nowhere, this was a shock. Just who was this willowy blond from Iowa City, Iowa? She was young and her performance wasn’t perfect, but her radiance and command of the stage were obvious. Over the years, her renditions of the Siren in “Prodigal Son” and the Stripper in “Slaughter on Tenth Avenue” have cemented her ability to use her glamour with steely calculation or with humor. In more exposed roles — in “Agon” and in ballets by Pam Tanowitz — she possesses an understated, lucid vibrancy. “When I feel completely confident in what I’m doing and secure in myself within the role,” she said, “it allows me to go out there without being in my head, without second-guessing how I’m being perceived. I’m just able to dance freely” But there was something else: Life happened. Recently Miller got married and relocated to Westchester County from the Upper West Side. She recently got a bachelor’s degree from Fordham University, majoring in anthropology with a minor in sociology. She found her identity outside of the company, outside of ballet. Earlier this season, after her second show of Balanchine’s “Variations pour une Porte et un Soupir,” Miller was promoted to principal. Jonathan Stafford, the company’s artistic director, told her that the plan had been to promote her after “Swan Lake,” but the decision was made to do it before. He didn’t want her, she said, to worry about anything. For years Miller saw “Swan Lake” as being unattainable. “I used to think that there’s no way I would ever be able to get through the whole ballet or to be able to master those steps,” she said. “I surprised myself because there’s nothing in it that I can’t do. I love to tell a story onstage, and I love to have a character to embody, but in my own way.” To her, simple is better. She’s focusing on not overdoing the emotion. “It’s not needed for either role, Odette or Odile,” Miller said. “It can get a little tacky.” That is one thing she has never been. Before her promotion to principal, and before she learned she’d be dancing “Swan Lake,” she was in a good place. She was dancing — and dancing true to herself. She felt respected by her peers and her superiors. And as her debut this season in Balanchine’s “Concerto Barocco” attested, she was performing with a certain beaming joy. “You never know how you’re going to feel until you’re doing it, and then you’re like, Oh wow,” she said. “You don’t really think, How am I going to hold my expression? Am I going to smile? With ‘Barocco,’ I just was smiling the whole time.” She wasn’t thinking about being promoted. “I felt supported,” she said. “And that’s what mattered to me: If I had good relationships, if I still enjoyed being in the studio with everyone.” Miller is poised and smart. She has a serious work ethic. And she’s not prone to sentimentality. When she was promoted, she said, she was happy and surprised but not exactly bawling her eyes out. “It’s not like I was focusing everything on it,” she said. But driving to work the next morning, she remembered a wish she had made at 15, a wish that she would some day become a principal dancer. Finally, she started to cry. Source link #Miriam #Miller #Steps #Spotlight #Swan #Lake #City #Ballet Pelican News View the full article at [Hidden Content]

Australians snubbed for Champions Trophy best XI Australians snubbed for Champions Trophy best XI No *********** has been selected for the ICC’s team of the tournament despite Steve Smith’s team making the semi-finals. Five players from winners India were chosen, plus the 12th man, while beaten finalists New Zealand supplied four including captain Mitch Santner and Player of the Tournament Rachin Ravindra. The other two players came from Afghanistan, who won one match, against England, and went out in the group stages. Ravindra scored two centuries and topped the run-scoring charts with 263. He made 112 against Bangladesh and 108 in the semi-final against South Africa. Shreyas Iyer was second highest scorer with 243 and he makes up an all-Indian upper middle-order with Virat Kohli (218 at 54.50 including an unbeaten century against Pakistan and 84 in the semi-final win over Australia) and KL Rahul, who finished with an average of 140. Englishman Ben Duckett, who was the third highest run-scorer after Ravindra and Iyer with 227 at 75.66, was overlooked in favour of Afghanistan’s Ibrahim Zadran, who hit 177 against England, the highest-ever Champions Trophy score, but made 17 and 22 in his other innings. The other Afghan included was fast-bowling all-rounder Azmatullah Omarzai who took seven wickets at 20 and scored 126 runs at 42.00. Santer, Matt Henry, Mohammed Shami and Varun Chakravarthy, who all took nine or more wickets, make up the frontline bowling attack with further support from Wayne Phillips. He earned inclusion for fielding brilliance and solid contributions with bat and ball. Individually Australia’s candidates were hamstrung by bad weather which washed out their match with South Africa and limited their batters to less than 13 overs against Afghanistan. Their top run-scorer was Josh Inglis, whose 131 runs included an unbeaten 120 against England, and Alex Carey who made 69 and 61 in his two knocks. Heading Australia’s bowling figures were Ben Dwarshuis (7-152) and Adam Zampa (6-172). The selection panel consisted of commentators and former international players Ian Bishop, Simon Doull and Ausralia’s Aaron Finch, Hindustan Times journalist Rasesh Mandani and ICC general manager events and corporate communications, Gaurav Saxena. ICC Men’s Champions Trophy 2025 Team of the Tournament Rachin Ravindra (New Zealand)Ibrahim Zadran (Afghanistan)Virat Kohli (India)Shreyas Iyer (India)KL Rahul (wk) (India)Glenn Phillips (New Zealand)Azmatullah Omarzai (Afghanistan)Mitchell Santner (capt) (New Zealand)Mohammad Shami (India)Matt Henry (New Zealand)Varun Chakravarthy (India)Axar Patel (India) Source link #Australians #snubbed #Champions #Trophy Pelican News View the full article at [Hidden Content]

Astro Bot PlayStation 5 bundle announced Astro Bot PlayStation 5 bundle announced The chances of a sequel ever coming out are second to none, but Astro Bot has at least taken the time to remember the PS4 exclusive The Order: 1886 in today’s latest speedrun level. As long as you beat the clock in Hard to Bear, available today as part of a new PS5 update, you’ll find Sir Galahad, lead character of The Order: 1886, waiting at the end. He then appears in the game’s main hub area wielding his electric gun. Source link #Astro #Bot #PlayStation #bundle #announced Pelican News View the full article at [Hidden Content]

Christian Holder, Longtime Star of the Joffrey Ballet, Dies at 75 Christian Holder, Longtime Star of the Joffrey Ballet, Dies at 75 Christian Holder, a standout dancer for the Joffrey Ballet who made his name in the 1960s and early ’70s in pointedly topical works like “Astarte,” a groundbreaking psychedelic ballet, and “The Green Table,” a haunting 1930s antiwar ballet made newly relevant by the Vietnam War, died on Feb. 18 at his home in London. He was 75. His death was confirmed by his friend and frequent collaborator, the choreographer Margo Sappington, who said the cause had yet to be determined. Born in Trinidad and reared in Britain, Mr. Holder came from a prominent artistic family. His father, Boscoe Holder, was a celebrated dancer, choreographer, painter, designer and musician. His uncle, Geoffrey Holder, was known in a variety of fields, including dance, painting and, in particular, acting: With his rich basso profundo voice, he was memorable as a Voodoo villain in the James Bond film “Live and Let Die” (1973), as well as in a series of television spots for 7Up. Mr. Holder was every bit as varied in his own artistic pursuits. In addition to dancing, he was a choreographer; a costume designer for Tina Turner and other stars, as well as for several ballets; a cabaret singer; a painter; a theater director; and a playwright. Still, his legacy was built on his 13-year run with the Joffrey — the mold-shattering company founded by Robert Joffrey and Gerald Arpino — which began in 1966, when he was 17. A lithe 6 feet 4 inches tall, he was “majestic and pantherlike” onstage, Ms. Sappington said in an interview. Virginia Johnson, a former principal dancer and artistic director at Dance Theater of Harlem, called him a study in contrasts, capable of “dancing with power or softness, whatever the role required.” Still, she added, “his physical presence — height, muscularity — made him terrifying” in one of his most famous roles: as Death in “The Green Table,” a pacifist 1932 ballet by the ******* dancer and choreographer Kurt Jooss. Mr. Holder began performing that linchpin role in 1969. Appearing in “skull-like whiteface,” as Anna Kisselgoff observed in a review in The New York Times, his character claimed a string of characters caught in the tangle of war. “Mr. Holder’s debut here was impressive, with a proper feel for the changes in attitude required of his role,” Ms. Kisselgoff wrote. She had quibbles, including that his performance was “almost too nimble at the start,” but she added that these were mere details in an “indubitably strong performance.” His time with the Joffrey coincided with the company’s golden era, Mr. Holder wrote in a 2006 retrospective in Dance Magazine — particularly his early years, when sweeping social changes were influencing the company’s sensibility and direction. “Women were beginning to re-evaluate their possibilities as citizens,” he wrote. “There were civil rights marches and boycotts, protests against mind-numbing atrocities committed in response to ****** people seeking the right to vote and a higher education.” Mr. Holder also found himself on the cultural vanguard in 1970 when he took over the male role in “Astarte,” a multimedia erotic duet that he performed with Nancy Robinson. The ballet, with a rock score by the band Crome Syrcus, had been featured on the cover of Time magazine in March 1968. “‘Astarte’ was immensely taxing, with slow motion, sculptural partnering going against the intense music, followed by an aggressively ******* duet with lifts and contortions of every kind for the woman,” he wrote in Dance Magazine. Following performances, the dancers “would stagger out of the theater, completely drained, aching, yet exhilarated.” Mr. Holder encountered the same sense of hippie-era abandon in “Trinity” (1970), a ballet by Mr. Arpino that blended rock music and the spirit of youthful rebellion and featured no story but ample loose-limbed improvisation. Mr. Holder was caught up in the spirit of the times, both onstage and off. During the production, he recalled in a 2021 video interview, “I was wandering around backstage in robes and bells on my toes and incense in the dressing room and that whole thing. That’s why that character is sort of like a whirling dervish.” Arthur Christian Holder was born on June 18, 1949, in Port of Spain, Trinidad. His mother, Sheila (Clarke) Holder, was, like his father, a professional dancer. He got an early glimpse of the spotlight at age 3, when he appeared with his father’s dance company in a performance celebrating the coronation of Queen Elizabeth II in 1953. He received formal training in dance, as well in theater, as a student at the Corona Academy (now the Corona Theater School) in London. At 15, he moved to New York on a scholarship to the Martha Graham School, but he soon transferred to the High School of Performing Arts (now the Fiorello H. LaGuardia High School of Music & Art and Performing Arts). It was there that Mr. Joffrey discovered him and brought him aboard as an apprentice. Mr. Holder went on to work with a number of acclaimed choreographers, including Agnes de Mille, Alvin Ailey and Jerome Robbins. Among his many acclaimed performances, he earned raves in José Limón’s “The Moor’s Pavane,” based on Shakespeare’s “Othello,” which opened at the City Center in New York in 1973. As the Moor, he was “powerful and dominating,” Clive Barnes of The Times wrote in a review, “making his eventual spiritual collapse all the more tragic.” After he left the Joffrey in 1979, Mr. Holder was the featured dancer in the San Francisco Opera productions “La Gioconda” (1979), featuring Luciano Pavarotti and Renata Scotto; “Samson and Delilah” (1980), with Shirley Verrett and Plácido Domingo; and “Aida” (1981), starring Pavarotti and Margaret Price. All those productions were choreographed by Ms. Sappington. Later projects included choreographing the American Ballet Theater productions of “Les Liaisons Dangereuses” (1993) and “Weren’t We Fools?” (2000), featuring songs by Cole Porter. No immediate family members survive. Mr. Holder moved back to London in 2009. A year later, his paintings were exhibited at a group gallery show that also featured his father’s work. In 2015, he presented an autobiographical one-man show, “At Home and Abroad,” at Crazy Coqs, a London cabaret. He later wrote and directed the play “Ida Rubinstein: The Final Act,” about a storied Ballets Russes dancer and actress from the Belle Époque, which opened at the Playground Theater in London in 2021. Looking back on his Joffrey years in Dance Magazine, he wrote, “We were a chosen group in the right place at the right time.” “We championed dance at college campuses,” he added. “We danced to rock ‘n’ roll. Some purists didn’t take us seriously, but we made our mark.” Source link #Christian #Holder #Longtime #Star #Joffrey #Ballet #Dies Pelican News View the full article at [Hidden Content]

‘Once in 400 years’ planetary alignment graces Chilean skies ‘Once in 400 years’ planetary alignment graces Chilean skies STORY: :: A rare celestial phenomenon sees seven planets appear in a small area of sky over Chile :: Luis Chavarria Garrido, Chilean Astronomer “That the seven planets are in a small area of the sky and all visible is something that happens every 400 years. It’s very rare. That’s the beauty of this planetary alignment that doesn’t occur on just one day, but over several weeks.” “The planets are positioned in what appears to be a straight line in the sky, but we must remember that the planets are not actually close to each other. They are in different positions in their orbits around the Sun, but from Earth, they appear in the same region of the sky.” The planets appear in a straight line due to their orbital paths, though they are spread out in the solar system. “The planets are positioned in what appears to be a straight line in the sky, but we must remember that the planets are not actually close to each other,” said Chavarria Gardo. This phenomenon coincides with March being the month of astronomy in Chile and the anticipation of a total lunar eclipse. Chile’s renowned dark skies, crucial for astronomical observations, face threats from increasing light pollution due to expanding industrial projects, particularly in the mineral-rich northern regions Astronomers have expressed concerns that the encroaching urban development could undermine the pristine conditions essential for scientific studies, despite ongoing efforts to balance industrial growth with the preservation of these skies. Source link #years #planetary #alignment #graces #Chilean #skies Pelican News View the full article at [Hidden Content]

Runes is a reimagining of an iOS puzzler, now revamped and rereleased Runes is a reimagining of an iOS puzzler, now revamped and rereleased Runes: Puzzle is a new rerelease of an oddball classic from iOS Move a cuboid block around a map and collect the other run-engraved blocks Ensure that you avoid various obstacles and cope with map-specific challenges When it comes to iOS puzzlers, there’s quite a variety out there. But it’s when you look at what’s newly released that you see some truly special and intriguing entries into the genre. Some of them are even those which originally hit storefronts but never made an impact, revamped and released. Such is the case with today’s subject Runes: Puzzle, out now on iOS! The basic gameplay of Runes is simple. You need to move your red block, flipping it over to move from square to square and connect it to all the necessary blocks. But, as I wrote earlier with another recently released iOS puzzler called Link All, the challenge lies in the twists that are made to this particular formula. Each world has its own mechanics, and with four of them to make your way through, as well as over 70 levels in total with five additional challenges to take on, there’s plenty to keep you occupied. Ruuunes Although the original developer was a little cagey about this being a rerelease, I think that this revamp looks very good indeed! However, whether or not the gameplay itself manages to keep people involved is another thing entirely. I think that the tedium of seeing all the blocks flip over may begin to grate after a while, but having not seen what all four of the distinct worlds have in store the different twists on these simple mechanics may be worth a look. But if this still doesn’t grab you why not check out our own ranking of the top 25 best puzzle games for Android and iOS? We’ve ranked some of the most brain-bustingly hard, but visually gorgeous and mechanically intuitive, puzzlers out there for you to give your mind the workout that it really deserves. Source link #Runes #reimagining #iOS #puzzler #revamped #rereleased Pelican News View the full article at [Hidden Content]

Kakeya conjecture: ‘Amazing’ spinning needle proof unlocks a whole new world of maths Kakeya conjecture: ‘Amazing’ spinning needle proof unlocks a whole new world of maths The simplest shape traced out by a spinning needle (orange) is a circle, but shapes with a smaller area are possible, such as the deltoid (right), created by spinning a needle while its central point traces out a circle Mathematicians have solved a decades-old problem related to spinning a needle, in what has been hailed as one of the most important mathematical results in recent times. Once seen as “impossible”, the solution should now unlock answers to a slew of other difficult problems that had seemed completely out of reach. “The paper is perhaps the biggest breakthrough in mathematics of… Source link #Kakeya #conjecture #Amazing #spinning #needle #proof #unlocks #world #maths Pelican News View the full article at [Hidden Content]

Nvidia down 30% from high as tech-led sell-off hits Magnificent Seven Nvidia down 30% from high as tech-led sell-off hits Magnificent Seven Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang gives a keynote address at CES 2025, an annual consumer electronics trade show, in Las Vegas, Nevada, U.S. Jan. 6, 2025. Steve Marcus | Reuters Nvidia has lost nearly a third of its value just two months after notching a fresh high. The leading chipmaker slumped about 5% on Monday, building on last week’s losses as heavy selling continued across the tech sector. The popular artificial intelligence stock has shed about a fifth of its market cap since President Donald Trump’s inauguration. The stock hit an intraday high of $153.13 on Jan. 7. Tariff fears and growth concerns have rocked technology stocks, including Nvidia, over the last week, with the tech-heavy Nasdaq Composite dropping more than 4%. The Nasdaq traded at a six-month low Monday. Many technology companies rely on parts and manufacturing overseas and new levies could push up prices. That’s also sparked worries of a U.S. recession, which Trump didn’t rule out over the weekend. Tesla led the declines among the Magnificent Seven names, plummeting more than 9%. The Elon Musk-backed electric vehicle company has plunged 16% over the last week and shed nearly 44% since Trump took office in January. The stock is also coming off its longest weekly losing streak in history as a public company. Source link #Nvidia #high #techled #selloff #hits #Magnificent Pelican News View the full article at [Hidden Content]