Jedi Master Luke Skywalker, Lor San Tekka, and young Ben Solo encounter the Knights of Ren

Also: Victoria Mahoney writes on how she nabbed the second-unit directing gig, new TV spots, some interesting interviews and one question with the Late Show folks.

Movie week!

It's not perfect but I did enjoy it!

Recently a flurry of articles about academic overachievers appeared in scientific journals. Specifically, the research found that people with a diagnosis of Autism were more frequently high achievers in school. And people diagnosed with ADHD were more frequently low achievers in school. A paper published last week in the Journal of Autism and Developmental Disorders […]

The post Aspergers or ADHD? The answer will surprise you. appeared first on Penelope Trunk Careers.

I’m back, and with some free time let’s try a translation I started last year; brands that the Japanese were surprised to learn were actually Japan-born. Samantha Thavasa television advertisements have an extremely American feel with supermodels frolicing around New York in fancy frocks, so I too was surprised to find they were actually Japanese. […]

1. ZAPP spezial: Medien in der Corona-Krise (ndr.de, Annette Leiterer & Gudrun Kirfel & Daniel Bouhs & Tim Kukral & Caroline Schmidt & Sebastian Asmus & Andrea Brack Peña) Das NDR-Medienmagazin „Zapp“ widmet sich in einer halbstündigen Sendung den verschiedenen Auswirkungen der Corona-Krise auf die Medienbranche. Es geht unter anderem um Rekordreichweiten durch Corona, um Rettungspakete […]

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Princeton's Michael Oppenheimer spoke on CBS's "60 Minutes" about the threat posed by rising sea levels to many cities, including UNESCO World Heritage Site Venice, Italy.

We’ve had the bloodletting of the Ed Wedding. Now we’ve got the full-fat Tory government that virtually no one predicted

It was supposed to be more complicated. After the vote, they said we’d have to get out the constitutional slide rule to try to work out who’d won. The Wikipedia entry on “minority government” experienced a huge spike in traffic. There were more bitter arguments about legitimacy than five seasons of Jeremy Kyle. Everyone agreed the election would herald the gravest constitutional crisis since the abdication, or that time Jade Goody slagged off Shilpa Shetty on Big Brother. Many said Ed Miliband was certain to become prime minister.

Yep. That’s what they said.

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This new entertainment series should get the motor running for movie and music fans.

We develop a model of financial crises with both a financial amplification mechanism, via frictional intermediation, and a role for sentiment, via time-varying beliefs about an illiquidity state. We confront the model with data on credit spreads, equity prices, credit, and output across the financial crisis cycle. In particular, we ask the model to match data on the frothy pre-crisis behavior of asset markets and credit, the sharp transition to a crisis where asset values fall, disintermediation occurs and output falls, and the post-crisis period characterized by a slow recovery in output. We find that a pure amplification mechanism quantitatively matches the crisis and aftermath period but fails to match the pre-crisis evidence. Mixing sentiment and amplification allows the model to additionally match the pre-crisis evidence. We consider two versions of sentiment, a Bayesian belief updating process and one that overweighs recent observations. We find that both models match the crisis patterns qualitatively, generating froth pre-crisis, non-linear behavior in the crisis, and slow recovery. The non-Bayesian model improves quantitatively on the Bayesian model in matching the extent of the pre-crisis froth.

More humans may be exercising more flexibility and cooperation, in vaster global numbers, than at any other time in human history.

Chaos in the face of a crisis like COVID-19 is just the American way.

Being born black in America means facing the likelihood of poorer health outcomes over a lifetime.

Anthony Rendon is optimistic about the Angels' outlook; Griffin Canning is expected to start the season on the injured list with elbow discomfort.

This new entertainment series should get the motor running for movie and music fans.

This new entertainment series should get the motor running for movie and music fans.

The rapper's musical ministry event wasn't the only last-minute addition to the schedule. His Yeezy collaboration with Adidas will be presented in Paris on Monday night.

With his fingers all over the White House's catastrophic coronavirus policy, Jared Kushner is treating pandemic mayhem as a mere publicity challenge.

Predicting the four acting races for the 2020 Oscars is easy this year, but there's still drama in the best picture race and others

Cynthia Erivo, Jamie Foxx, Louis Gossett Jr., Lena Waithe and HBO's 'The Wire' cast were honored at the 2020 American Black Film Festival Honors on Sunday.

Tesla's sales of its Model 3 perked up in the U.S. in May, according to estimates from the website InsideEVs, after a round of price cuts.

Tensions boiled over this month when a Porsche Macan jumped a curb in central Berlin and plowed into a crowd of pedestrians, killing four.

Perhaps no corner of the auto industry is as ripe for disruption as car shopping.

'Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker' will arrive on Disney+ on May 4, two months earlier than originally anticipated.

A documentary chronicling former First Lady Michelle Obama's book tour for her bestselling memoir, "Becoming," is coming to Netflix next month.

TV highlights for May 3-9 include the 2019 franchise entry "Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker" plus a new documentary about Natalie Wood and the big-screen adaptation of "Downton Abbey"

Like most scripted TV series, CBS legal drama "All Rise" was on hold for the coronavirus outbreak — until producers hatched a plan for a virtual season finale.

Captain Tom Moore was made an honorary cricket player by former England captain Michael Vaughan on his 100th birthday.

STATE pension age is continually being reviewed and altered by the government. The latest change occurred earlier this week.

Liverpool tried to sign Tanguy Ndombele last summer from Lyon and now French reports claim they will return for the Tottenham midfielder.

Crusader has received fresh reports from readers of scam automated phone calls that claim to be from their bank or card company saying there has been a suspicious transaction on their account.

KATE and Prince William took part in a surprise party over video call to celebrate the 75-year anniversary of VE Day.

Josh Maja features in the new season of Sunderland 'Til I Die on Netflix - but what was his salary at the club and how much more did he earn from his move to Bordeaux?

Magnitude   Mw 6.1 Region   SOUTHERN EAST PACIFIC RISE Date time   2019-12-25 20:20:15.5 UTC Location   25.38 S ; 115.87 W Depth   20 km

Magnitude   Mw 6.1 Region   CENTRAL EAST PACIFIC RISE Date time   2020-03-22 22:38:05.3 UTC Location   4.68 S ; 104.87 W Depth   10 km

Yesterday, Prime Minister Boris Johnson told an international video conference that we face a battle of "humanity against the virus". How right that is - and the battle has started. According to Professor Nicholas Hart, one of the doctors who saved Mr Johnson's life, "COVID-19 is this generation's polio."

The cost of Britain's controversial new aircraft carriers is set to rise by at least £1bn, and perhaps almost £2bn, as a result of the government's decision taken last October to make them compatible with different aircraft than those originally envisaged.

I have learned that the working assumption of the contractors on the project, which are BAE Systems, Thales UK and Babcock, is that the carriers will now cost taxpayers some £7bn in total, compared with the £5.2bn cost disclosed by the Ministry of Defence last autumn - and up from the £3.9bn budget announced when the contract was originally signed in July 2008.

One defence industry veteran said the final bill was bound to be nearer £10bn, though a government official insisted that was way over the top.

The Ministry of Defence and the Treasury believe that total final costs could be nearer £6bn, if only one of the carriers is reconfigured to take the preferred version of America's Joint Strike Fighter aircraft.

An MoD official said no final decision had been taken on whether the first carrier to be built, the Queen Elizabeth, or the second carrier, the Prince of Wales, or both would be reconfigured.

He said it would probably be the case that changing the design specification for the Prince of Wales would be the cheapest option. But if that happened, it is not clear when - if ever - the Queen Elizabeth, due to enter service in 2019, would actually be able to accommodate jets (as opposed to helicopters).

Whatever happens, the increase in the bill will be substantial - and is only regarded by the Treasury as affordable because the increment is likely to be incurred later than 2014/15, when the expenditure constraints put in place by the Chancellor's spending review come to an end.

The Treasury is adamant that the MoD will receive no leeway to increase spending before then.

An MoD spokesman sent me the following statement late last night:

"The conversion of the Queen Elizabeth Class...will allow us to operate the carrier variant of the Joint Strike Fighter that carries a greater payload, has a longer range and is cheaper to purchase. This will give our new carriers, which will be in service for 50 years, greater capability and interoperability with our allies. Final costs are yet to be agreed and detailed work is ongoing. We expect to take firm decisions in late 2012."

The disclosure of the rise in costs is bound to reopen the debate about whether the UK really needs new carriers, especially since the UK will be without any aircraft carrier till 2019, following the decision to decommission Ark Royal.

British Tornado jets are currently active in Libya, flying from a base in Italy, without the use of a British aircraft carrier.

The latest increase in likely expenditure on the enormous carriers - which are almost the size of three football pitches - stems from the decision of the Ministry of Defence in October to change the design one or both of them so that they can be used by the carrier version of America's Joint Strike Fighter.

This would mean they have to be fitted with catapults and traps - or "cats and traps" - rather than ramps.

The likely final cost will depend on whether the cats and traps are cheaper traditional steam devices, or newer-technology electromagnetic ones - and also whether the cats and traps are fitted to both carriers or just one.

Industry and government sources tell me that even if the MoD goes for the cheaper option, and even if the cats and traps are fitted to only one carrier, the additional bill will still be of the order of £1bn.

The hope however would be that in the longer term savings could be achieved because the maintenance costs of the more conventional Joint Strike Fighter should be lower.

One of the reasons the refit could be relatively more expensive is that for one of the carriers, HMS Queen Elizabeth, there would have to be a retrofit - because so much work has already been done on it.

"Retrofitting is always very pricey" said a senior defence executive.

The carrier project has been beset by controversy and cost increases.

In June 2009, I disclosed that the carrier costs had soared by more than £1bn as a result of a decision taken by the previous government to delay their entry into service.

Then last October the government, in its Strategic Defence and Security Review, came close to cancelling one or both carriers.

In the end, it committed to build both, but with the strange caveat that it might end up using only one of them. This was the reason given by the Prime Minister David Cameron in the Commons for building both:

"They [the previous government] signed contracts so we were left in a situation where even cancelling the second carrier would actually cost more than to build it; I have this in written confirmation from BAE Systems".

However in a memo to the House of Commons Public Accounts Committee (PAC), the Ministry of Defence estimated that cancelling both contracts would have saved £2bn and cancelling just one would have saved £1bn.

The MoD told MPs that "as the cancellation costs would have had immediate effect, the costs in the short term would have been significantly higher than proceeding with both carriers as planned; nearly £1bn more in financial year 2011/12 if both carriers had been cancelled".

The MoD was also concerned that cancelling the carriers would have undermined British capability and know-how in the manufacture of complex warships.

The carriers, called Queen Elizabeth Class Aircraft Carriers, are being built by the Aircraft Carrier Alliance, whose members are the UK defence giant BAE systems, the British engineering group Babcock, and Thales of France. The Ministry of Defence is also described as both a member of the Alliance and a customer.

Update 15:06:It has been pointed out to me, by what you might term a grizzled sea dog, that the UK does still possess two ships that can take aircraft. They are HMS Illustrious and HMS Ocean (which is a commando carrier with a flat top).

However they can't accommodate jet airplanes, only helicopters - so for veteran sailor it was a terrible error for the government to scrap the illustrious Harrier jumpjet.

He also takes the view, which I've heard from many other military personnel, that it would be bonkers to convert only one of the new carriers to take the carrier version of the Joint Strike Fighter - because if that were to happen, one of the carriers would be an enormous white elephant, and the other would not be able to provide a service for 100% of the time (it would need periodic servicing).

That said, the cost of retro-fitting the first carrier being built now and also redesigning the other one would certainly be nudging £2bn, maybe more.

He believes there is powerful strategic logic to building two new huge ships able to handle jets.

The problem for David Cameron is that he may find it hard to make the strategic case, since last autumn he justified building the two on the basis that it would not save any money to cancel one - which is not the most positive case for what turns out to be a very substantial public investment that anyone has ever advanced.

Como crise atingiu primeiro americanos, na opinião de analistas e operadores de empresas de remessas migrantes devem se recuperar financeiramente a tempo de socorrer familiares em suas cidades originais.

A economia italiana está enfraquecida há anos, mas a pandemia acabou deteriorando ainda mais a situação financeira de famílias e negócios, que agora estão na mira do crime organizado.

By Audrey Hatter | Staff Writer According to the the Cable News Network (CNN) website, the...

The Food and Drug Administration authorises emergency use of the experimental anti-viral drug.

Rey, Leia and C-3PO get emotional.

It was "heartbreaking" not to have Fisher on set for the new Star Wars film, says director J.J. Abrams.

The brand will live on, thanks to Jon Favreau and Baby Yoda.

The "Americans" actress dived into the change of place to play "hidden" spice smuggler Zorii Bliss.

Yan guided Margot Robbie's return to her character Harley Quinn, and is the first woman of Asian descent to direct a major Hollywood superhero movie.

“Arise: A Simple Story” coasts on its gentle visual language, but is a good option for those looking for a family-friendly game.