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Sergio review – fact-based Netflix UN drama opts for old school romance

Wagner Moura and Ana de Armas give strong performances in a mostly effective retelling of the life and tragic death of a celebrated Brazilian diplomat

There’s an old school charm to Sergio, documentarian Greg Barker’s narrative portrait of UN diplomat Sérgio Vieira de Mello, a dramatic retelling of a life he already brought to the screen in a 2009 documentary of the same name. Barker’s knowledge of Sérgio’s life and accomplishments is backgrounded by a clear respect for who he was and so while the film is factually detailed, as one would expect, it’s also rooted in a desire to showcase his humanity, both in and out of work, with Barker deciding to lean into full-tilt romantic tragedy, perhaps also as a way of differentiating his two Sergios.

Related: Love Wedding Repeat review – laboured Netflix romcom farce

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Beastie Boys Story review – Spike Jonze and the boys are back in town

Ad-Rock and Mike D host a convivial trip down memory lane in this filmed record of a live show staged in tribute to third member Adam Yauch

The release of this documentary coincides with #MeAt20, a heart-twisting craze on social media for posting pictures of yourself at 20 years old. Middle-aged people’s timelines are speckled with funny, sweet and sometimes unbearably sad images of themselves in unlined, unformed youth, doing goofy things in milky analogue pictures from back when you had 12 or 24 exposures on your roll-film camera and getting them developed at Boots was a pricey business. That’s what I thought of while watching this engaging, oddly moving film from Spike Jonze: a record of the live stage show he devised at the Kings Theatre in Brooklyn, New York, in tribute to white hip-hop stars and tongue-in-cheek party-libertarian activists the Beastie Boys. It is presented by the two surviving members, Adam Horovitz and Michael Diamond, in tribute to the third member, Adam Yauch, who died of cancer in 2012. Jonze is reuniting with the band after having directed a string of their music videos, including the crime-TV spoof for their single Sabotage in 1994.

Horovitz and Diamond amble on stage, apparently dressed head-to-toe in Gap, and appear for all the world to be about to unveil the iPhone 4S, although actually their jokey anecdotalism makes the show in some ways like the regional tours once presented by George Best and Rodney Marsh. With amiably rehearsed back-and-forth banter, they introduce the embarrassing photos and excruciating TV clips that are shown on a big screen. And the effect of seeing them juxtaposed with the plump-faced frizzy-haired imps of 1986 is startling and bizarre. In the present day, the advancing years seem to have boiled away the badass attitude, leaving behind the quirky humour.

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Extraction review – hokey, high-octane action thriller

Chris Hemsworth plays a super-tough mercenary on an all-guns-blazing mission to rescue a crime lord’s kidnapped son

Sadly, this has nothing to do with dentistry. Extraction is a made-for-Netflix action thriller from veterans of the Marvel Comic Universe – screenwriter Joe Russo, stunt-specialist-turned-director Sam Hargrave and star Chris Hemsworth. It’s based on the graphic novel Ciudad (which Russo co-authored), transferring the action from the Paraguayan city of Ciudad Del Este to Dhaka in Bangladesh.

Extraction is a little bit hokey and absurd, and the very end has an exasperating cop-out – but it has to be admitted that, in terms of pure action octane, Russo and Hargrave bring the noise, and there are quite a few long-distance “sniper” scenes in which people get taken out from miles away as the bullet travels through their skulls with a resonant thoonk.

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Ice busy signing draft selections to contracts

It’s that time of the year in the WHL. News of player signings are a daily occurrence and the Winnipeg Ice’s management team has been busy. On Monday, the club announced ...




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Tennis, golf swing into action

It’s only the beginning of May, but for local golfers and tennis players, Monday felt like Christmas. Golf courses and tennis courts were officially allowed to open Monday as a part ...




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Washington Capitals investigating Brendan Leipsic's 'unacceptable and offensive comments'

Screenshots showing repugnant and insulting remarks — some misogynistic, some racist, others hinting at drug use and sexual conquests — from a private group chat between several hockey players, including ...




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Texas Residents Warned Not to Flush Gloves and Face Masks, After Workers Unclog Sewage Pumps 20 Times in a Day

Water utility workers in El Paso, Texas were forced to unclog pumps over 20 times in 24 hours after residents refused to heed their call to refrain from flushing personal protective equipment and other coronavirus-related items down the toilet.




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Mega Millions Results, Numbers for 5/8/20: Did Anyone Win the $231 Million Jackpot Prize Last Night?

The winners and results of last night's Mega Millions lottery, plus how to avoid falling victim to a lottery scam.




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Coronavirus Hits U.S. Secret Service Staff with 11 Active Cases, 23 Recoveries and 60 in Quarantine

The service, which protects political leaders including the president, said in March there was only one case, but new documents show that the disease is more widespread than believed.




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'I Was A Feminist Activist In The '70s When The Pill Was Legalized For All Women'

It has been 60 years since the FDA first approved the birth control pill on May 9, 1960. It emerged as an essential pillar of women's ability to have good quality of life.




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'Fortnite' Party Royale Event With Steve Aoki & Deadmau5 - Tracklist & What Happened

"Fortnite" Party Royale had another big show on May 8. Here's everything you need to know about the Dillion Francis, Steve Aoki and deadmau5 concert that just took place.




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Jobs Report Reveals Racial Inequality in Unemployment at an Historic Low, Thanks to Pandemic

More than 20 million Americans lost their jobs in the last month, and unemployment among African-Americans has hit 16.7 percent.





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Facebook Is Taking on Zoom With a 50-Person Video Chat Feature

Messenger Rooms will be free for all users, with no time limit




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Martian Dynamo was Active between 4.5 and 3.7 Billion Years Ago, Study Says

A planet’s global magnetic field arises from a so-called dynamo — a flow of molten metal within the planet’s core that produces an electrical current. On Earth, the dynamo is what makes compass needles point north. In a paper published in the journal Science Advances, a team of researchers from Canada, the United States and [...]




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Astronomers Find Closest Black Hole

Astronomers using the Fiber-fed Extended Range Optical Spectrograph (FEROS) on the MPG/ESO 2.2-m telescope at ESO’s La Silla Observatory have found a stellar-mass black hole in HR 6819 (also known as HD 167128), a naked-eye stellar system located 1,119 light-years away in the constellation of Telescopium. The system is made up of an inner binary [...]




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NASA’s Neil Gehrels Swift Observatory Tracks Water Loss from Interstellar Comet 2I/Borisov

Astronomers using NASA’s Neil Gehrels Swift Observatory have tracked water loss from 2I/Borisov, the first known interstellar comet to visit our Solar System, as it approached and rounded the Sun. Their findings were published in the Astrophysical Journal Letters. 2I/Borisov was detected on August 30, 2019 by Gennady Borisov, an astronomer at the Crimean Astrophysical [...]




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Raptorial Dinosaurs Did Not Hunt in Coordinated Packs, Paleontologists Say

An analysis of the fossilized teeth of Deinonychus antirrhopus, a species of wolf-sized dromaeosaurid dinosaur that lived between 115 and 108 million years ago (Cretaceous period) in what is now the United States, adds to the growing evidence that this and other raptors were not complex social hunters by modern mammalian standards. The image of [...]




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Jurassic Fossil Reveals Violent Squid Attack in Progress

An international team of paleontologists from the University of Plymouth, the University of Kansas and the Forge Fossils has found a specimen of the squid-like cephalopod Clarkeiteuthis montefiorei preserved with the herring-like fish Dorsetichthys bechei in its two arms; the bones in the head of the fish are broken in a manner that suggests a [...]




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Astronomers Crack Mystery of X-Shaped Radio Galaxies

Astronomers using the MeerKAT telescope at the South African Radio Astronomy Observatory in Cape Town, South Africa, have solved a longstanding mystery of X-shaped radio galaxies. Many galaxies far more active than the Milky Way have enormous twin jets of radio waves extending far into intergalactic space. Normally these go in opposite directions, coming from [...]




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Facebook’s new Gaming app launches on Android, with iOS version coming soon

Facebook’s dedicated Gaming app is now live on Android, months before its planned June release. The social media giant pushed the app out two months prior to its scheduled unveiling amid a global pandemic that’s left people all over the world isolated at home, rapidly burning through entertainment options. The New York Times announced the […]




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After 160,000 accounts are compromised, Nintendo shuts down NNID logins

Nintendo today confirmed earlier reports of account breaches dating back over the past few weeks. The gaming giant issued an update (via Nintendo Japan) noting that around 160,000 Nintendo Accounts were impacted, which found multiple being used to purchase digital items without the owner’s consent. Along with the purchasing powers, the offending parties may have […]




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Valve drops VR support for macOS

Valve is calling it quits on macOS support for its virtual reality platform. A Valve employee posted an update to the company’s SteamVR forums, noting that “SteamVR has ended macOS support so our team can focus on Windows and Linux.” Apple introduced “Metal for VR” back in June 2017 and highlighted a partnership with Valve. […]




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All product creators can learn something from Jackbox Games’ user experiences

While Jackbox clearly owes a great deal of its current popularity to the shelter-in-place policies, they've also been honing their craft for years. It's worth looking at what makes them work.




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New studio Modern Games acquires Beasts of Balance

Modern Games is a new studio working to create games that combine physical and digital play. The company was founded by husband-and-wife team Justin and Amanda Kifer — serial entrepreneurs who previously launched companies including Citizen Local (acquired by MyLife in 2011) and Fidgetly, a fidget spinner company that also created a motion controller for […]




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Acting U.S. spy chief overhauls agency in defiance of congressional concerns

Defying congressional oversight concerns, U.S. President Donald Trump’s acting director of national intelligence on Friday unveiled organizational changes to his agency.




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Trump has not had contact with infected Pence staffer recently: official

U.S. President Donald Trump has not been in contact recently with a member of Vice President Mike Pence's staff who was found to be infected with the coronavirus, a senior administration official said on Friday.




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NFL: Players, coaches call for investigation into killing of Ahmaud Arbery

NFL greats Tom Brady and Anquan Boldin were among dozens of prominent players and coaches who called on Friday for a federal investigation into the death of Ahmaud Arbery, an unarmed black man who was shot while running in Georgia.




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Coronavirus inflicts huge U.S. job losses as pandemic breaches White House walls

The U.S. government reported more catastrophic economic fallout from the coronavirus crisis on Friday as the pandemic pierced the very walls of the White House and California gave the green light for its factories to restart after a seven-week lockdown.




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Protesters decry delay in arrests of two white men in shooting of black Georgia jogger

Hundreds of protesters gathered in front of a Georgia courthouse on Friday to decry the killing of an unarmed black man in February and the delay in charging two white men in a shooting captured on video that was released earlier this week.




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Coronavirus outbreak: Eight flights from several countries to fly back stranded Indians today

New Dlehi, May 09: Several Indians, who are stranded in at least seven countries due to coronavirus outbreak, is all set to fly back to their home country on Saturday in special flights under Vande Bharat Mission. According to officials,





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'Bois Locker Room': Experts Say Youngsters Need Rehabilitative Measures, Not Just Punitive Action

A dialogue on sex, consent, ownership over bodies must be introduced from a young age so that it becomes part of a dominant narrative, say experts.





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Air India Crew Involved in Repatriation Flights Should Stay Back in Delhi, Says Noida Police Commissioner

Noida Police Commissioner has written to national carrier Air India, requesting the airline to ensure that pilots and crew involved in repatriation flights should stay back in Delhi.





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359 Indians Stranded in Dubai Brought Back in Special Flights to Tamil Nadu

The stranded people hail from Tamil Nadu and they were working in the United Arab Emirates.





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Senior Hockey Players to Undergo Coaching Course Online Amid Coronavirus Lockdown

The basic coaching course will be attended by 32 senior men and 23 senior women core probables on May 11 and 15 respectively.





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Why ‘Propaganda’ Against Safoora Is A Step Back for Women’s Rights

Misogynistic campaign against Safoora reiterates that gender equality in our country is a distant dream.





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The bacteria in a mother’s gut may protect babies from food allergies

The presence of bacteria that break down fibre in a mother’s gut is linked to a reduced risk of food allergies in her child’s first year of life




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Eating too much salt seems to impair body's ability to fight bacteria

High salt intake seems to impair the immune cells in humans that fight bacteria because of a side effect of the hormones that help get rid of salt




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How long does coronavirus stay on surfaces and can they infect you?

The coronavirus has been found to stick to surfaces for days – but you’re more likely to catch it when close to infected people, or possibly through droplets spread via plumbing and ventilation systems




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How to fight infection by turning back your immune system's clock

Your immune system ages too, weakening as you get older and making you more susceptible to infections. Fortunately, we are discovering plenty of things you can do to turn back the clock and stay healthy




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The science of crispy: how to make perfect pork crackling

What is it that turns tough pork skin into amazing crackling? Sam Wong reveals the secret to that wonderful crispy crunch




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Our approach to covid-19 can also help tackle climate change

We can't lose sight of the climate emergency when dealing with the covid-19 pandemic, say Christiana Figueres and Tom Rivett-Carnac




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Does the ACE2 protein explain covid-19 risk for underlying conditions?

Does a cell surface protein explain why the coronavirus is more likely to kill people with diabetes or heart disease? Researchers are trying to find out




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Covid-19: We can ward off some of the negative impacts on children

Children will face many hidden negative effects from the new coronavirus, but it's not too late to avert them, says Paul Ramchandani




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Do face masks work against the coronavirus and should you wear one?

The advice on widespread face mask use to protect against covid-19 varies wildly, but there is some evidence that they stop sick people spreading the virus




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It's time to give the pedometer a break and embrace lifting weights

The incredible benefits of strength training are only just becoming apparent. That's good timing, when working out indoors is beneficial to everyone's health




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BCG vaccine being trialled as potential protection against covid-19

A long-standing hypothesis suggests the BCG vaccine also serves to generally enhance the immune system, meaning it could protect against covid-19, and trials are under way to find out




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Pet food can contain drug-resistant bacteria that may pass to humans

Some dogs and cats may be passing gut microbes to their owners that withstand last-resort antibiotics, which can be needed to fight off pneumonia from a coronavirus infection




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What is it like to be a covid-19 contact tracer and what do they do?

Covid-19 contact tracers are part healthcare worker, part detective and part call centre operative. But what is the job really like? New Scientist spoke to one in Ireland to find out




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UK sets new target to recruit 18,000 contact tracers by mid-May

The UK government has set a new target of recruiting an army of 18,000 coronavirus contact tracers by the middle of May, to be in place for the launch of the NHS contact tracing app