Tech Giants Anti-Trust Hearing: Apple Wanted More than Just 30% Cut from Subscriptions, Emails Showed – Brinkwire

Emails shared by the House Judiciary Committee on Wednesday (June 29) during the tech giant anti-trust hearing showed that Apple wanted a 40% cut from some third -party subscriptions accessible through its platforms.

Apple services chief Eddy Cue said in an email dated March,2011 that they should ask for 40% of the first year only but we need to work a few deals to see what is right.

Jai Chulani, another executive, also said that that the iPhone maker may be leaving money on the table if we just asked for about 30% of the first year of subscriptions.

Both executives were referring to Apples video streaming service Hulu and digital content apps like those being offered by sports leagues. It also applies to the Apple TV set-top box but not yet certain whether it is also applicable to apps running on the iPad and iPhone devices.

The tech giant enjoyed a 30% cut from app subscriptions when it launched the feature a few years back. It reduced the fee to 15% after the first year.

Since last year, Apples rules and fees on its App store have been subjected to regulators criticisms. Developers also had their fair share of complaints.

In the Anti-trust hearing, Apple CEO Tim Cook reiterated that their fees are competitive and that theyve got several competition trying to lure mobile consumers and developers.

READ ALSO: Apple Fined $27M in France For Slowing Old iPhones; Charged Deceptive!

This article is owned by Tech Times

Written by Krisana E.

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Tech Giants Anti-Trust Hearing: Apple Wanted More than Just 30% Cut from Subscriptions, Emails Showed - Brinkwire

BASF and Law Firm Agree to $72.5 Million Settlement With Mesothelioma Victims and Others – Mesothelioma.net Blog

Published on July 24, 2020

After decades of fending off mesothelioma lawsuits by denying the presence of asbestos in its talc, BASF and its long-time law firm have agreed to a $72.5 million settlement to resolve claims that theyd hidden evidence that their talc products contained the carcinogenic material. The settlement will provide compensation to thousands of people harmed by asbestos in the chemical giants product, and will also allow those who previously dropped their claims to refile them.

According to legal ethics professor Stephen Gillers of New York University Law School, mesothelioma claims against BASF have been stymied by BASFs no asbestos claims for years.The allegation is that Cahill lawyers helped BASF hide and destroy evidence of asbestos in its talc, he said.

His comments are confirmed by the plaintiffs attorneys, who said that BASF and its law firm, Cahill, Gordon & Reindel LLP, had concealed the presence of asbestos in their talc for nearly thirty years, dating back to a 1979 lawsuit that blamed the mesothelioma death of a tire worker on the companys talc. As part of the settlement in that long-ago case, testing that confirmed asbestos in BASFs talc was sealed by a confidentiality order.Ever since that time the company argued that the carcinogen was not present in its asbestos.

The resolution of the case represents years of legal wrangling between mesothelioma victims, BASF and their attorneys. In 2012 a proposed class-action suit alleging fraud on the court was dismissed but then in 2014 a federal appeals court said the defendants actions were systematic fraud designed to thwart the judicial process. The case was later dismissed on appeal but more recently a federal appeals court in Philadelphia agreed with mesothelioma victims and reopened the case.

Much of the evidence presented came during a mesothelioma lawsuit filed by the daughter of a former employee of BASF, who argued that her illness was a result of second-hand exposure to the companys talc. Her father, formerly a research scientist, gave a deposition indicating that the company had known about asbestos in its talc for years.

People who have been diagnosed with malignant mesothelioma are the victims of asbestos exposure, and in many cases the companies responsible for this exposure were well aware of the dangers that their products caused. If you or someone you love has been affected by asbestos and you need guidance, the Patient Advocates at Mesothelioma.net can help. Contact us today at 1-800-692-8608.

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BASF and Law Firm Agree to $72.5 Million Settlement With Mesothelioma Victims and Others - Mesothelioma.net Blog

TCR Therapeutics Announces RECIST Responses with First TC-210 Dose Tested in Advanced Mesothelin-Expressing Solid Tumors | DNA RNA and Cells | News…

DetailsCategory: DNA RNA and CellsPublished on Monday, 27 July 2020 12:36Hits: 584

- TC-210 TRuC-T cell monotherapy induced tumor regression in first five patients

- Two RECIST unconfirmed partial responses and two patients with stable disease through six months

- Manageable toxicity profile, with only one patient exhibiting TC-210-related non-hematologic Grade >2 toxicity

- Translational data demonstrated T cell expansion and cytokine production

CAMBRIDGE, MA, USA I July 26, 2020 I TCR2 Therapeutics Inc. (Nasdaq: TCRR), a clinical-stage immunotherapy company with a pipeline of novel T cell therapies for patients suffering from cancer, today announced positive interim data from the first five patients treated in the Phase 1 portion of the TC-210 Phase 1/2 clinical trial for mesothelin-expressing solid tumors. All five patients showed tumor regression including two RECIST unconfirmed partial responses (one of which remains subject to independent central review) and two patients with stable disease through six months. Translational data further demonstrated TRuC-T cell expansion and activation. A manageable toxicity profile was observed with only one patient exhibiting TC-210-related non-hematologic grade >2 toxicity and no evidence of neurotoxicity or on-target, off-tumor toxicity.

We are delighted that our very first dose of TC-210 induced consistent tumor regression and clinical benefit in heavily pre-treated cancer patients, said Garry Menzel, Ph.D., President and Chief Executive Officer of TCR2Therapeutics. There are very few options for patients with solid tumors and those expressing mesothelin represent a significant frontier of unmet medical need. While these are early data requiring further study, we are encouraged by the potential of our TRuC-T cells as we continue to enroll and treat patients with the goal of quickly finding a recommended Phase 2 dose for TC-210.

Based on my prior experience working with both TCR-T and CAR-T cells, including the FDA approval of Kymriah, observing consistent clinical benefit in patients at presumably suboptimal T cell doses is quite meaningful, said Alfonso Quints-Cardama, M.D., Chief Medical Officer of TCR2Therapeutics. These early TC-210 data suggest our approach may overcome the challenges faced by many T cell therapies in the hostile solid tumor microenvironment. Our enrolled patients have failed multiple lines of therapy, including standard chemotherapy, checkpoint inhibitors and in some cases other mesothelin-directed approaches, in indications where survival has been historically shorter than six months.

The primary objectives of the Phase 1 portion of the study are to define the safety profile of TC-210 in patients whose tumors overexpress mesothelin and to determine the recommended Phase 2 dose (RP2D). Secondary objectives include overall response rate (ORR) and disease control rate (DCR). Exploratory objectives include the assessment of expansion, tumor infiltration, and persistence of TC-210 T cells.

Summary of trial conduct, baseline characteristics and TC-210 dose:

Key clinical findings from the first five patients treated with TRuC-T cells include:

About the Phase 1/2 Clinical Trial in Advanced Mesothelin-Expressing Solid Tumors

The Phase 1/2 clinical trial (NCT03907852) is evaluating the safety and efficacy of TC-210, TCR2s T-cell receptor fusion construct directed against mesothelin. The trial is enrolling patients with mesothelin expressing NSCLC, ovarian cancer, cholangiocarcinoma, and malignant pleural/peritoneal mesothelioma. The Phase 1 dose escalation portion of the clinical trial utilizes a modified 3+3 design withfour increasing TC-210 T cell doses. At each dose, TC-210 will be tested in two separate dose levels: first without lymphodepletion and then following lymphodepleting chemotherapy. The Phase 1 portion of the clinical trial is ongoing.

In the Phase 2 portion of the clinical trial, approximately 50 patients are planned to receiveTC-210at the RP2D in four distinct cohorts according to their cancer diagnosis: NSCLC, ovarian cancer, malignant pleural/peritoneal mesothelioma and cholangiocarcinoma. Each cohort will include ten patients, except the NSCLC cohort which will include 20patients with eight patients to receive TC-210as single agent and 12 patients to receive TC-210in combination with a programmed cell death 1(PD-1)blocking antibody.

About Mesothelin-Expressing Solid Tumors

Mesothelin is a cell-surface glycoprotein highly expressed in a wide range of solid tumors, including malignant pleural/peritoneal mesothelioma, ovarian cancer, cholangiocarcinoma, breast cancer, pancreatic cancer and others. Overexpression of mesothelin is associated with poorer prognosis in some cancers due to its active role in both malignant transformation and tumor aggressiveness by promoting cancer cell proliferation, invasion, and metastasis. Of the wide range of solid tumors expressing mesothelin, non-small cell lung cancer, ovarian cancer, mesothelioma and cholangiocarcinoma represent a significant patient population up to 80,000 in the United States alone.

TCR2 Therapeutics Conference Call and Webcast

TCR2 Therapeutics will host a conference call and webcast on Monday, July 27th at 8:00am E.T. The webcast and presentation will be made available on the TCR2 Therapeutics website in the Investors section under Events at http://investors.tcr2.com/events. Following the live audio webcast, a replay will be available on the Company's website for approximately 30 days.

About TCR2 Therapeutics

TCR2Therapeutics Inc.is a clinical-stage immunotherapy company developing a pipeline of novel Tcell therapies for patients suffering from solid tumors or hematological malignancies.TCR2sproprietary T cell receptor (TCR) Fusion Construct Tcells (TRuC-T cells) specifically recognize and kill cancer cells by harnessing signaling from the entire TCR, independent ofhuman leukocyte antigens (HLA). In preclinical studies, TRuC-T cells have demonstrated superior anti-tumor activity compared to chimeric antigen receptor T cells (CAR-T cells), while secreting lower levels of cytokine release. The Companys lead TRuC-T cell product candidate targeting solid tumors, TC-210, is currently being studied in a Phase 1/2 clinical trial to treat patients with mesothelin-positive non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC), ovarian cancer, malignant pleural/peritoneal mesothelioma, and cholangiocarcinoma. The Companys lead TRuC-T cell product candidate targeting hematological malignancies, TC-110, is currently being studied in a Phase 1/2 clinical trial to treat patients with CD19-positive adult acute lymphoblastic leukemia (aALL) and with aggressive or indolent non-Hodgkin lymphoma (NHL). For more information about TCR2, please visitwww.tcr2.com.

SOURCE: TCR2 Therapeutics

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TCR Therapeutics Announces RECIST Responses with First TC-210 Dose Tested in Advanced Mesothelin-Expressing Solid Tumors | DNA RNA and Cells | News...

Case Remanded to State Court Due to Lack of Diversity or Federal Enclave Jurisdiction Over Equipment Manufacturer – Lexology

In Hatten v. Grobet United States, the U.S. District Court for the District of Arizona recently ruled on a defendants motion to remove the case to federal court. In this case, plaintiff Renee Hatton alleged that as a result of the defendants actions, her mother contracted mesothelioma from exposure to asbestos-containing products between 1977 and 1979 while working as an art teacher and jewelry-making instructor at Fort Huachuca. Defendant Grobet filed a notice of removal, asserting that the court had federal enclave jurisdiction, as well as diversity jurisdiction over the suit.

The plaintiff argued the case should be remanded because the defendants notice of removal was procedurally defective in that it failed to include proof of consent of all defendants, because one defendant was an Arizona resident defeating diversity jurisdiction, and that the court did not have federal enclave jurisdiction. Defendant Grobet argued the Arizona defendant was fraudulently joined in the case, thus justifying diversity jurisdiction. The court ultimately disagreed that the Arizona defendant was fraudulently added to the case. Therefore, the court found that Grobet failed to establish diversity jurisdiction over this case. The court also dismissed Grobets federal enclave jurisdiction argument. Specifically, the court found Grobet could not establish that the federal government possessed an exclusive interest over Fort Huachuca.

As a result of Grobets failure to establish a basis to support federal jurisdiction, and that the acts at issue in this case occurred on a federal enclave subject to exclusive federal jurisdiction, the court remanded the case for further proceedings.

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Case Remanded to State Court Due to Lack of Diversity or Federal Enclave Jurisdiction Over Equipment Manufacturer - Lexology

Gaming Industry Use of Blockchain May Lead to Mass Adoption – Cointelegraph

Blockchain technology has recently become a phenomenon in various areas of the economy, driving innovation, fostering growth and bringing added value. Among the most noteworthy of these sectors is the gaming industry. Gaming is a use case that drives true adoption of blockchain technology by taking the incentive for the user from pure speculation to transactions on a blockchain platform. This drives innovation in development as well as consumer adoption.

The first true blockchain gaming application was Cryptokitties. While the platform itself is a technology demonstrator for collectible items, it quickly rose to prominence as the application representing the majority of transactions made on the Ethereum platform. Since its inception, the number of apps leveraging blockchain technology in gaming has exploded, with categories ranging from adventure games and card games to action games, role-playing games and casinos.

Blockchain use cases in gaming are mainly constrained by the transaction capacity of blockchain platforms in case of Ethereum. Current blockchain applications in gaming, therefore, are experimental tickets, with collectible platforms and mobile games leading the pack.

Card games are among the first games to use blockchain technology in gameplay. The unique feature presented by collectible cards is that the cards themselves, as nonfungible tokens, become tradeable items. Most of the time, the NFTs are traded on OpenSea. One of the most popular collectible card games using blockchain technology is Gods Unchained.

Related: Overview and Market Trends of Crypto Games in 2020

Real-time strategy, or RTS, and massively multiplayer online, or MMO, games are ideal genres for testing blockchain technology in gaming, as the gameplay allows for the creation of multiple asset types and smart contracts governing the rules of the games themselves. While successful titles in gaming are increasingly massively multiplayer, online and feature group dynamics, the application of blockchain technology in gaming is probably going to gain significant traction in this segment.

Pixelmatic, a studio based in Shanghai and Vancouver that was founded by Samson Mow current chief strategy officer of Blockstream and former director of production at Ubisoft is working on a space-based MMO game with elements from the RTS genre and Eve Online and featuring a cryptocurrency for an in-game medium of exchange. While Eve Online features a marketplace for in-game goods, theres no news yet about the further development of crypto-assets concerning in-game items. This is still pretty encouraging, and the game is the first step toward wider acceptance of cryptocurrencies among industry players in mainstream gaming.

Related: Investing in Blockchain Gaming: Why VCs Are Betting Big

On Ethereum, games running on the blockchain risk spamming the network with transactions, increasing gas fees. Regardless, an increasing number of games are being developed to run on public blockchains themselves, creating an incentive to develop solutions to mitigate the subsequent flooding of the network. Proof-of-stake blockchains, sidechains and state channels may provide solutions to solve the issues underlying limited transaction speeds on proof-of-work blockchains currently deployed.

The leading blockchain games this year are mostly card games, according to EsportsBets, with RTS games following closely behind. Big-ticket items are still either under development or being considered by larger studios, leaving a lot of room for garage studios to use their first-mover advantage and make their name before competition enters the market.

Casinos have been among the first applications in gaming to adopt blockchain technology, with online casinos leading the pack. There are quite a number of blockchain-based online gambling sites, most of which offer superior quality and probability for the player compared with traditional, fiat-based casinos and gambling sites. Gambling is probably the most mature segment in blockchain-based gaming, and it is very likely to offer serious competition to traditional markets.

With the appearance of senior developers and mostly open tools, blockchain gaming is unlocking previously unimaginable value for creators and gamers alike. For the first time, a truly open entertainment economy can be built.

Speculation on platforms that may find blockchain applications and tokens useful in gaming is on the rise, and the platforms are often listed on top exchanges shortly after being released. With the continued development of easy-to-use user interfaces, standards for blockchain applications using relevant technologies to move transactions from PoW platforms to ones offering greater transaction speeds, and the release of items capturing the attention of audiences acceptance by the mainstream is only a matter of time.

Blockchain technology is especially suited for gaming, and gaming can directly benefit from blockchain technology, both technically as well as in unlocking value from in-game items, tournaments, character development and gamer recognition. This paves way for esports being a leader in the sports and entertainment sector, much like the internet is now. Today, traditional media is mostly run on the internet, so perhaps through blockchain technology, all sports could one day contain elements of esports.

The views, thoughts and opinions expressed here are the authors alone and do not necessarily reflect or represent the views and opinions of Cointelegraph.

Artem Kabanov is an entrepreneur with more than six years of experience. He has been a crypto investor since 2016 and is the founder of four online companies, crypto project X-token and a number of traditional businesses. Artem is a professional speaker and a member of Club-500.

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Gaming Industry Use of Blockchain May Lead to Mass Adoption - Cointelegraph

China Pushes for Blockchain Dominance But Will the World Trust It? – – VOA Khmer

Despite Washingtons pushback against China's ambition to lead the world in building emerging technologies such as 5G, Beijing next month will launch a global effort in developing blockchain, a distributed database that experts say could reshape businesses around the world.

Starting August 10, China will roll out the international version of its blockchain infrastructure, the Blockchain Service Network, or BSN. The network gives developers tools and access to blockchain technology through BSNs overseas data centers so that they can build applications for businesses and smart cities.

As the BSN takes hold in worldwide countries, it will become the only global infrastructure network that is innovated by China, whose gateway access is controlled by China, the BSN Alliance declared in a white paper last year.

Blockchain is a kind of distributed database with trustworthy record-keeping that makes possible cryptocurrencies like bitcoin as well as new types of products like digital identification. The technology has the potential to create decentralized, more transparent digital networks.

U.S. Representative Bill Foster, a congressman who holds a doctorate in physics and is a leader of a group of American lawmakers studying the technology, has called it a disruptive technology that will change the way we do business in almost every sector.

Blockchain technology can create more transparent record-keeping with open-source code to create trustworthy databases. But Chinas system is a more centralized alternative overseen by the BSN Alliance, a group of state-owned companies that designs its digital architecture and maintains control over the databases.

China hopes that this managed network, which it says offers cheaper costs and better interoperability over other competitors, will become the preferred option for businesses and governments trying to use the technology.

Backed by the Chinese government, BSN already is the worlds largest blockchain ecosystem that is expected to serve as the backbone for massive interconnectivity both in China and around the world. It already has more than 100 city-nodes, or physical devices running on the network, stationed on six continents. The network hopes to deploy up to 200 more by the end of this year.

A Chinese national priority

Just as the countrys aggressive international expansion in other major emerging technologies such as 5G and artificial intelligence, China declared blockchain a national technology priority in 2016. It was mentioned twice in the Chinese State Councils 13th five-year economic plan that was released that year.

Chinese President Xi Jinping emphasized blockchain as an important breakthrough, and promised that China would seize the opportunity during his speech in October at a so-called "collective study" session held by the Political Bureau of the Communist Party of China (CPC) Central Committee.

In Xi's words, China will take the leading position ... occupy the commanding heights of innovation, and gain new industrial advantages. The meeting had only one agenda on the table: the current status and trends of blockchain technology.

"China is the most active major national government in the world in blockchain development. China is one of the few countries that sees blockchain as a strategic emerging technology, alongside areas such as artificial intelligence and 5G wireless," Kevin Werbach, a professor at the Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania, told VOA.

China now has more than 700 blockchain projects registered since last year with the countrys Cyberspace Administration. According to a white paper on Chinas blockchain patent application released last Friday, China holds more blockchain patents than any other country in the world. Eric Jing, Chairman at China's tech giant Alibaba's Ant Financial Services, told reporters last week that users of its blockchain service are uploading 100 million digital assets a day mostly records of transactions.

A blockchain with Chinese characteristics

BSN was born last spring while the world was struggling to deal with catastrophic social, economic, and political challenges caused by the COVID-19 pandemic. As part of Beijing's grand strategy to lead the digital transformation of the world economy, the plan is to make the network so effective and low-cost that it becomes the dominant provider for blockchain cloud computing services.

"The concerns are that more developer and customer mindshare will shift to Chinese platforms and that China will push technical standards to reflect its policy positions," said Werbach, who once served as a consultant for the CIA on a blockchain training program.

Werbach said that is why its essential to the Chinese blockchain system is different from the open models that emphasize decentralization.

The geopolitical implications of the technology depend on who designs and implements the technologies, argued Werbach, who has written extensively on emerging technologies such as blockchain. "China is focused more on permissioned blockchains for enterprise applications, and on Chinese platforms that build in the capability for oversight and compliance that the Chinese government requires," said Werbach in an email to VOA.

Two days after Xis speech last year, a blockchain initiative announced by the CCP enabled party members to pledge their loyalty to Xi, by immutably recording it on the blockchain ledger.

As Chinese leaders press the countrys engineers to forge ahead on the technology, companies overseas are sounding an alarm that the United States is ceding its role as the internets leading innovator.

A recent white paper co-authored by Amazon Web Services, IBM, Deloitte, and others noted that U.S. military is falling behind China and Russia in a blockchain arms race.

"While China and Russia have invested millions of dollars worth of research and development (R&D) into the technology, the policymakers of our country are still trying to understand what the technology is," said the paper that was released last May.

A report published last year by the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania also warned about Chinas blockchain dominance: "By all counts, China is leading the world in the use and development of blockchain technology.

"We are way behind China when it comes to blockchain technology," Chris Larsen, executive chairman of Ripple Labs Inc, a U.S.-based leading blockchain company, told The Wall Street Journal recently.

Werbach said if U.S. policymakers and companies do not compete for blockchain business, "blockchain with Chinese characteristics will become more of the norm."

On the other hand, some analysts remain skeptical that China is leading the world on technology. Larry Wortzel, a commissioner of the U.S.-China Economic and Security Review Commission of the U.S. Congress, pointed out in an email to VOA that IBM and other American companies have the technology and use it. "I do not believe the US is losing a Blockchain race,'" said Dr. Wortzel.

In the top 50 blockchain company list compiled by Forbes last year, Amazon was ranked number one with Ant Financial of China's Alibaba second. Among the top 5 companies, two are Americans, two are Chinese ones, and one is from England.

Martin Chorzempa, a research fellow at Peterson Institute for International Economics, told VOA that most of the money China is pouring in would be wasted. "As we can see from the recent global pushback against Huawei, especially in Australia and Europe, I do not see it as plausible that the world will adopt on Chinese blockchain infrastructure."

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China Pushes for Blockchain Dominance But Will the World Trust It? - - VOA Khmer

From Boyhood to Dazed and Confused: The 10 best films of Richard Linklater – Far Out Magazine

American director Richard Linklater has established himself as one of the great contemporary directors with his distinctive narrative and cinematic styles, clearly observable in some of his fantastic films like Waking Life and Boyhood. Adopting a humanist perspective, his approach to filmmaking works in beautiful synchronicity with the themes that he chooses to explore, ranging from ordinary subjects like suburban culture to eternal mysteries like time.

Speaking about his artistic vision, Linklater once explained, Its like this big, difficult puzzle. And life just never felt that way to me. It kind of unfolds in a much more straightforward way that kind of makes sense later. Im always trying to depict how the mind works, or how time flows.

Born in Texas, Linklater stayed true to his roots and explored the spirit of the state in many of his films. His filmography is very much influenced by his early experiences. He dropped out of university to work on an offshore oil rig where he spent his time reading. He developed an interest in the world of cinema only when he returned to land. Investing his savings in a Super-8 camera and editing equipment, he moved to Austin, Texas to be a filmmaker.

On his 60th birthday, we revisit some of Richard Linklaters best films as a celebration of a life dedicated to filmmaking.

Often called the spiritual sequel to Dazed and Confused, Richard Linklaters 2016 film is set in the 1980s and follows the adventures of a successful college baseball team as they explore a special kind of adulthood, one that is free of responsibilities. The narrative structure is fluid as the film flows from one scene to the next and celebrates hedonistic freedom.

A magical coming-of-age film, Everybody Wants Some!! evokes a deep nostalgia for lost youth and gives its hilarious comedy an undertone of melancholia. Speaking about the film, Linklater said, Yeah, well its a continuation of Boyhood in a strange way but, time-wise and setting, its a sequel to Dazed. Spiritually, its as much a continuation of Boyhood its very different, though. Everybody Wants Some!! is like a different part of me; the carousing athlete that I was.

This 2011 black comedy is a rare example of an ironic work that is devoid of any semblance of cynicism. Bernie Tiede (played by Jack Black) is a local mortician of a rural town in Texas. He is a beloved resident who gets involved in a typically postmodern tale of homicide and ambiguity. The film is a philosophical investigation masquerading as a humorous character study.

Quirky and threatening at the same time, Jack Black delivers a memorable performance as a charmingly murderous mortician. Linklaters 2012 film is actually based on true events. Bernie Tiede is a real person who was released from prison. Linklater worked with him for the film, saying, My whole point in the movie was this: Can the nicest guy in the world actually be capable (of murder)?

He continued: The answer is yes. So anybody whos too sure of their own behaviour given the wrong relationship, who knows what anyones capable of?

Linklaters 2001 drama is a tense story, witty and sarcastic, that features two equally unlikeable guys, Vin (played by Ethan Hawke) and Jon (Robert Sean Leonard), in a motel room as they unravel past misdeeds. Richard Linklater manages to construct a beautifully unsettling microcosm of unparalleled claustrophobia and anxiety.

Shot on digital video in order to stay faithful to the intimacy of the script, Linklater has an unmistakable flair for mise-en-scene and editing. To add to the experience, the film unfolds in real-time, providing no relief to the viewer who cannot get out but that is how any dialectical determination should be. Like many of Linklaters other films, Tape is highly experimental and is a unique addition to his impressive filmography.

Based on celebrated sci-fi novelist Philip K. Dicks eponymous 1977 novel, Richard Linklaters 2006 effort uses rotoscoping techniques to create a truly special world that exists somewhere between euphoria and paranoia. The psychedelic visuals work perfectly to blur the distinctions between fantasy and reality, reducing everything to the status of phantoms and hallucinations.

Linklater presents a powerful examination of the meaning of identity, truth and any other epistemological prejudices one might have. The film, which explores issues like state surveillance and substance abuse, induces interminable anxiety that never overwhelms the audience but neither does it go away.

In a 2006 interview, Linklater commented, Technically, this is a science fiction movie but there is only one element in the whole movie that is science fiction and thats the scramble suitwhich is really more of a metaphor on identity.

He added, As the movie takes place in the post-9/11 world, you know, where we had John Ashcroft and guys like that kind of clamping down security, it was amazing how quick it took on that tone of government control.

More than anything, Linklaters 2003 subversive effort is worth watching for Jack Blacks memorable performance as Dewey Finn, a masterful musician with an undying passion for rock and roll music. He is also extremely unemployable due to his irreverent attitude. A wannabe Rockstar with an attitude problem? Go figure!

Due to an unexpected turn of events, he finds himself as a substitute teacher at one of New Yorks finest schools. School of Rock challenges institutional dogmatism and attacks that inherent elitism by turning future doctors and lawyers into tiny rock and roll legends.

Although it wasnt a critical success, Linklater considered it a learning experience that he had fun with, School of Rock was a movie the industry brought to me, and I saw something in it and risked that failure.

I enjoyed it and grew from the experience. If that had been my second or third film I would have been doomed. Some people have a hit and want to do something like that and its their destiny.

Slacker, Linklaters second film, is a fascinating observation of an assortment of weird characters, ranging from aspiring artists and philosophers to incompetent criminals and crazy conspiracy theorists. Richard Linklater presents us with a surreal world that is saturated with ideas but is crippled by inaction.

Linklater conducts an objective analysis of the consequences of unabashed nihilism, something that only results in disillusionment and malaise. Slacker is fiercely original and funny and the absence of a linear narrative only strengthens the concepts that Linklater appears to be exploring.

The idea of Slacker came to me at about 2 in the morning, on a long drive, Linklater explained. The narrative structure hit me in one shot why cant you tell a story moving from one character to the next? I was 23, in love with cinema, and its possibilities.

Far more experimental than A Scanner Darkly, Waking Life jumps from one meaningful question to the other without letting the gravity of its words take effect. Structured like a dream and featuring a similar rotoscoping animation, this is Linklaters misunderstood masterpiece. It starts all sorts of conversations but never really concludes any.

By the end of this psychedelic experience, we cannot help but appreciate the mesmerising environment of confusion that Linklater constructs. Deeply philosophical in nature, Waking Life will always be proof of Richard Linklaters unwavering originality.

Like everything I do, it came from real life. Believe it or not, a movie thats so unreal takes all its cues from personal experience, Linklater commented. That really happened to me, it was a really formative lucid dream, like in the movie, that series of false awakenings. It seemed to go on for weeks and weeks, and got creepy near the end.

One of the most memorable films of the 1990s, Dazed and Confused is set in 1976 and is a far superior exploration of the hedonistic irreverence of youth than his 2016 film, Everybody Wants Some!!. It is an art house film that pretends to be a drug-addled comedy in order to slip into mainstream consciousness.

Watching Dazed and Confused is a liberating experience because it does not tremble in the apprehension of the responsibilities of the future. Rather, it is a spectacular altar on which the worries of the future are sacrificed for the pleasure of the present.

Linklater elaborated on what the film was supposed to be, I thought the 1970s sucked. Dazed was supposed to be an anti-nostalgic movie. But its like trying to make an anti-war movie just by depicting it, you make it look fun.

He added, I wanted to do a realistic teen movie most of them had too much drama and plot but teenage life is more like youre looking for the party, looking for something cool, the endless pursuit of something you never find, and even if you do, you never quite appreciate it.

Boyhood is Linklaters very own epic, there is no doubt about it. The fact that it was filmed over a period of 12 years with the same cast only contributes to the monumental ethos of the mundane that Linklater captures so brilliantly. Boyhood is a literal coming-of-age film but it is so much more than that. We are presented with the human experience of growing up in an honest and engaging way.

Films often indulge in imparting platitudes and sermonize their audience with ideological affinities but Boyhood is truly unique because it makes us feel like the film itself is trying to figure things out along the way, learning and growing. Richard Linklaters 2014 masterpiece was critically acclaimed as well as a commercial success, winning multiple BAFTA Awards and Critics Choice Awards. Patricia Arquette even won an Academy Award for Best Actress in a Supporting Role.

Linklater reflected, [Boyhood] goes beyond that. With every film, youre excising a story that youve been obsessed with. This is still revealing itself to me. I dont have any answers now.

Adding: But I did have a wonderful deepening of everything about life: growing up, parenting. Every movie, youre getting a degree in whatever that subject is. This couldnt be more life-affirming. It was a great way to spend 12 years.

His most celebrated work(s), Linklaters critically acclaimed trilogy is the culmination of his career-long experiments with the concept of cinematic time. The three films, Before Sunrise (1995), Before Sunset (2004) and Before Midnight (2013), chronicle the evolution of Celine (played by Julie Delpy) and Jesses (played by Ethan Hawke) relationship.

Jesse and Celine are constructs, Linklater said while speaking about the main characters of the trilogy. Theyre not Ethan (Hawke) and Julie (Delpy), and theyre not me. Theyre these written parallel worlds, saying something about different phases of life, or the times were living in, or just what its like to be a person, how you physically change, how you mentally change, how youre still the same person but kind of not.

Extremely intimate in nature, the films put together a realistic portrayal of a relationship, from the magical first encounter to the disillusionment of middle-aged romance. Linklater masterfully uses the passage of time to shine a light on the manifestation of entropic forces which slowly dismantle grand ideas like love and replace them with the heartbreak of ordinary life.

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1920: The Year Broadway Learned To Syncopate | The Syncopated Times – The Syncopated Times

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The arrival of George Gershwin on the Broadway scene, heralded by his hit song Swanee, marks 1920 as a critical year in the development of American musical theater and the integration of syncopation into the mainstream of American popular song.

Earlier this year, I contributed an article focusing on the recording of Crazy Blues by Mamie Smith and her Jazz Hounds, a significant event in the history of syncopated music that reached its centennial anniversary in 2020. I then hatched the idea of delving further into what the year 1920 had to tell us about the historical development of syncopation. At first glance, this inquiry seemed to reveal comparatively few landmark events from the 1920 season. Arguably, the prior year and the succeeding year contained more memorable moments for devotees of popular records and musical theater.

Looking more broadly, though, what stands out is how Americans in those years were living through a staggering amount of social and cultural change, a period of upheaval that rivals the boatload of troubles we are experiencing in 2020. The trends in music and entertainment reflected this tumult and provided a provocative soundtrack for a rapidly changing society. The music itself was also changing and evolving at great speed. (Seventy-eight revolutions per minute!)

Specifically, one can make the case that in 1920or, so as not to pinpoint, between 1919 and 1921New Yorks popular music scene and the music heard on the Broadway stage took a decisive turn toward syncopated rhythm and melody, as well as an increasing sophistication in words and music. The combination of those two elements forms the essence of what we think of today as the American popular songbook. Reflecting on the early careers of Irving Berlin, Jerome Kern, and Gershwin, three great songwriters and native New Yorkers, may serve to capture what this kind of change sounded and felt like.

The story of the syncopated musical properly begins during the ragtime era. In the summer of 1898, Clorindy, or The Origin of the Cakewalk, with music by Will Marion Cook, lyrics and libretto by Paul Laurence Dunbar, opened in the Casino Theaters roof garden to become the first African American production on New Yorks legitimate stage. Cook and Dunbar then created several more musical comedies, including the Africa-themed In Dahomey (1903) and Bandanna Land (1908). The company headed by comedians Bert Williams and George Walker performed both these works in Broadway theaters.

After this strong start, syncopations promise went largely unredeemed for some time. The star of Clorindy, Ernest Hogan, died in 1909, the same year in which the dapper George Walker was stricken with syphilis and quit performing, passing away early in 1911. A drought of black talent lasting about a decade then descended on the New York theater, lifting only in 1921 when Eubie Blake and Noble Sissles Shuffle Along was that seasons greatest triumph.

Bert Williams, undoubtedly the nations first black entertainment celebrity, was the sole African American performer who remained known to the theater-going public in the 1910s. Without Walker, however, Williams was no longer so much a ragtime song-and-dance man as a comic vocalist, a solo act who headlined the Ziegfeld Follies throughout the decade. Since the Follies consistently had the most opulent production values of any New York entertainment, though, Williams remained highly visible.

The other most prominent African American music man of the period was the bandleader James Reese Europe, founder of the Clef Club, a highly successful fraternal organization for musicians. In February 1919, Lieutenant Europe brought his Harlem Hell Fighters, the 369th InfantryBand back from overseas action in a victory parade. Three months later, Europe was shockingly murdered by a fellow musician. This tragedy undercut the Clef Clubs dominance in New Yorks syncopated music scene.

Even in the absence of African American representation in elite theatrical venues, syncopated music made major strides between 1915 and 1920. Ragtime was reaching the end of its era of greatest popularity, while younger performers such as New Yorks stride piano professors and Gus Haenschen of St. Louis were giving syncopated music a hotter kind of rhythmic drive.

These were also the years in which both jazz and blues issued forth as distinct styles and began spreading beyond black communities. For example, a group of pale-skinned musicians from New Orleans made some of 1917s biggest hit records under the name the Original Dixieland Jass Band. Jazz was evolving from a salacious slang word into a recognizable, raucous musical idiom.

Meanwhile, tunes such as W.C. Handys St. Louis Blues, Hesitation Blues, and Yellow Dog Blues were recorded by multiple, non-African American dance bands and vocalists before 1920. Jazz and blues were still in their infancy, of course, but their moment had arrived.

Apart from their inherent musical appeal and energy, what made the broader public so immediately receptive to jazz and, somewhat more gradually, to blues, was the way their frenetic beat seemed to match the new pulse of modern life. Its worth dwelling on this point. It can be difficult to hold in mind the sheer degree of social turbulence and the whirlwind of radical change with which Americans, especially those in the burgeoning big cities, were contending in the second half of the 1910s.

Among many destabilizing events during those years, one whose significance we are now in a position to appreciate was the deadly influenza pandemic of 1918-19. Also, after two decades of extremely high immigration levels, the nations ethnic composition had shifted radically. The Great Migration of some six million African Americans from the states of the former Confederacy to the northeast and midwest was in full swing.

The friction occasioned by these population shifts brought about episodes of racially motivated violence in dozens of U.S. cities, provoked by a revived Ku Klux Klan and peaking in the Red Summer of 1919. The victory of the Bolshevik reds in Russia two years earlier unnerved elites in every industrial society, raising the stakes for strikes in a period of intense labor conflict.

Modernization and technology were transforming the basic conditions of daily experience. The streets were suddenly teeming with motorcars, the skies streaked with aeroplanes. Speed was in vogue. The telephone had begun to alter longstanding norms of communication and social interaction. Electric lighting transformed the urban landscape by night, turning Manhattans theater district into the Great White Way, a playground in the new world. The rise of motion pictures, maturing from a novelty into an art form, posed a threat to the cultural primacy of live theater and vaudeville entertainment.

An even greater shift in the patterns of urban night life came in January 1920, when the Volstead Act came into effect. Prohibition had a major impact on the conditions of live music performance and attendance. More broadly, U.S. life under the Eighteenth Amendment turned masses of ordinary citizens into outlaws, sparked an explosion of organized crime, and appeared to signal that the rule of law was subject to erosion. Gangsters had corrupted the baseball World Series the prior fall.

Syncopated, African-derived hot music seemed to speak to these trends, particularly the decadence and illicit hedonism of the speakeasy. Gender relations were in flux as the triumphant womens suffrage movement indicated the growing confidence of what some were calling the new woman. Many perceived these changes as a loosening of sexual mores and a weakening of antiquated Victorian social and moral restrictions.

Probably the single greatest agent of change in this period was the Great War in Europe. Even before the United States entered the war in 1917, wartime conditions were accelerating African American migration toward jobs in the northern industrial centers. Among the many developments ushered in by World War I was the origination of modern propaganda methods in the governments campaign to secure enlistment and public support for the war. Think of the famous I Want You Uncle Sam poster from 1917, for example, part of an overt effort to manufacture popular support for the martial cause.

African Americans enlisted in their tens of thousands. Like them, many immigrants saw and took advantage of a chance to contribute to the country in its time of need and thus, hopefully, accrue a greater stake in the democratic enterprise. Many thousands of black servicemen returned home after serving in segregated units, only to find the Klan and lynchings still on the rise. For them, the reality of a stratified society put the lie to the national myth of unity amidst diversity.

That myth, however, would not be dislodged, for it served a valuable purpose in the perennial task of constructing an impression of a national spirit and a collective American identity. Music was an essential tool in this persuasive effort, and no individual devoted himself more assiduously or productively to erecting this national mythology through music than a Russian-born Jewish immigrant named Israel Beilin, who drew upstraight from the melting potthe monicker Irving Berlin.

Berlins first songs, stemming from about 1907, fell in step with the flag-waving sentiments of George M. Cohan, Broadways leading song-and-dance man of the time. They sought to advance a modern American style of popular song, overflowing with twentieth-century pep. Many of these early efforts were, in essence, musical ethnic jokes, so-called coon songs, wop songs, and yid songs, such as Yiddle on Your Fiddle, Play Some Ragtimeall in fun, as it were, and intended to spice up the gumbo simmering on the melting pot.

A more blatant attempt to appropriate the popularity of syncopation was Alexanders Ragtime Band, which invoked the name of ragtime while partaking only lightly of its musical features. Alexander was, in fact, a fine Tin Pan Alley march in the Cohan mode, interpolating the musical clichs of the bugle call and Stephen Fosters Swanee River. It became a mega-hit on stages across the country and in sheet music sales in 1911.

Largely on the strength of this tune, Berlin became closely associated with the revival and further diffusion (or, some would say, commercial dilution) of ragtime in the 1910s. He swiftly produced a sheaf of songs to take advantage of his growing reputation as the ragtime king, with titles such as Ragtime Soldier Man, The Syncopated Walk, Syncopated Cocktail, etc.

Around 1913, he boasted to an interviewer that he had established the syncopated ballad. This prescient comment implies a conscious intent to use syncopation to create a fusion of what were considered two quite distinct song forms, the ballad and the up-tempo rhythm number. Such an amalgamation is a key ingredient of the jazz-age American popular songbook.

It would be inaccurate to say Berlin wrote rags; in fact, he readily confessed that he never truly understood what ragtime precisely was. But he did master and employ several deft tricks of syncopation in his melodies, usually accentuated by the simple yet pungent syntax of his lyrics. You can hear it in the way the rush of sixteenth notes in the middle of The International Rag (1913) illustrate the point made in the lyrics: all hands are dancing to a raggedy melody full of originality.

The listener cant miss the tricky triplets in the opening bars of Everybody Step, the signature jazzy production number from Berlins 1921 Music Box Revue. The A section of Puttin on the Ritz (1930) may contain the most recognizable use of syncopation among Berlins well-known standards. Other examples are easy to find. More generally, the slangy urban lexicon in Berlins lyrics, his aggressive use of assonance, inner rhyme, and other lively verbal effects, constantly reinforce the infectious, catchy quality of the rhythmic pulse with which all his work is stamped.

Equally as important as Berlins association with ragtime was his association with the United States of America and its national culture. This was true as early as Alexanders Ragtime Band and remained so throughout his six-decade career. Jeffrey Magee argues in his superb book Irving Berlins American Musical Theater (2012) that the songwriter viewed ragtime as the musical and linguistic passport to his adopted country. Not only did syncopation comprise the irresistible formula for concocting e pluribus unum, it could even be said to have conquered the globe on behalf of this American ideal: the world goes round to the sound of The International Rag.

The Great Wars arrival gave Berlin the chance to test the mettle of his Tin Pan Alley patriotism. While his idol Cohan hit the bulls eye in April 1917 with the hit march Over There, Berlin contributed at least two popular numbers that year attempting to channel ethnic pluralism into wartime patriotism: For Your Country and My Country and Lets All Be Americans Now.

Berlin was naturalized, then (naturally) drafted in early 1918, and while in uniform managed to produce and perform in a revue that made it to Broadway, entitled Yip, Yip, Yaphank. When the Second World War came around, Berlin adapted this material into the musical This Is the Army (1942). Jerome Kern was not exaggerating when he said, around 1925, that Irving Berlin has no place in American musiche IS American music. (And this is not to speak of God Bless America, written originally for Yaphank but shelved until 1938, when its emergence proclaimed a new chapter in American myth-making.)

By 1919, ragtimes value on the cultural marketplace had diminished, increasingly supplanted by the terms jazz and blues and the new musical developments they signified. All the social tumult described above may help us comprehend just why African American music made such notable strides from 1919 to 1921, with more authentically indigenous artistic forms surpassing the popularity of the now-commercialized ragtime. Equally important, Americans of pale hue had also begun responding more deeply to syncopated African American musicresponding, that is, from the waist down.

Another crucial factor to include in examining the spread of syncopation is the revolution in dance that accompanied and helped drive it. The most well-known ragtime dance, the cakewalk, was deeply associated with minstrelsy, thoroughly pre-modern in its aesthetic, and embraced by few dancers who werent black. The color line in dance grew fainter in the 1910s, however, as the animal dance fad played out, and the turkey trot, grizzly bear, bunny hug, etc., evolved into a keeper, the fox trot.

We can understand this progression as the frantic, so-called primitive movements arising from early attempts to adapt European American dance styles to musics rooted in African American syncopated rhythm, gradually leading to a genteel, so-called civilized accommodation.

Leading the way in this genuinely heroic cross-cultural enterprise of taming the animal steps was the decades reigning dance couple, Mr. and Mrs. Vernon and Irene Castle. Along with their musical director James Reese Europe and Europes Society Orchestra, the Castles showed that heterosexual couples could dance together gracefully to the new syncopated music, in public social settings and in the theater.

The Castles played starring roles in a 1914 revue, Watch Your Step, that was Irving Berlins breakthrough in writing for the stage. In a huge, perhaps unprecedented move for a songwriter, Berlin had ascended from Tin Pan Alley to Broadway, penning his first full theatrical score in a hit show that was hyped as the first syncopated musical.

Before 1920, Berlin appears to have viewed jazz as little more than a new, faddish word he could add to his lyrical lingo, as in the Berlin song Mr. Jazz Himself (1917). For a brief period in the early 1920s, however, some critics considered Berlin to be not only a jazz composer but one of the premier ones, thanks to tunes such as Everybody Step.

By the end of the 1910s, Berlin had already accumulated as much success as any previous U.S. composer. Increasingly, he sought to shift away from writing for the popular song market and concentrate on theatrical work, which brought greater prestige. In all likelihood, he was inspired in this direction by the success his contemporary Kern was enjoying in the field of musical comedy. Born in Manhattan in 1885, Jerome David Kern got his start as a songwriter a few years earlier than Berlin; in 1904, a pair of his melodies were interpolated into the Broadway run of a British play. Soon he was contributing numerous songs to imported British musicals.

Syncopation was never a strong element in Kerns compositions. Nevertheless, he made a pivotal contribution to the eventual triumph of syncopated music in the American theater. To properly understand his importance in this history, a glance at the variety of types of musical theater on offer in these years is worthwhile.

Numerous sub-genres of staged musical entertainment existed, with somewhat fluid distinctions between them. To some extent, this range reflected gradations in social class among segments of the theatrical audiencea serious matter, especially as regards New York society.

On one end of this spectrum lay operetta, the most prevalent and well-established of the popular musical genres, yet indisputably a European import. At the other end were found variety presentations packaged in different forms, rooted culturally both in European music-hall fare and, on the U.S. side, in the minstrel tradition.

Vaudeville, and its somewhat less respectable cousin, burlesque, were popular formats for presenting a number of diverse traveling performers and acts on a single evenings bill. Revues constituted the most glamorous iteration of the variety show on Broadway stages, exemplified by the Ziegfeld Follies (which was modeled on the floor shows at the Folies Bergre in Paris). Berlins staged work of the 1910s was virtually all in the revue format.

The book musical dwelled somewhere in the middle of this taxonomy, descending from traditions such as comedy and farce. Most book musicals of the early twentieth century had very thinly plotted narratives and made little to no effort to connect musical numbers to their settings, characters, and stories in a naturalistic manner.

Kerns talents as a melodist placed him very near the most well-reputed of the operetta composers, such as Victor Herbert and Franz Lehr. The best of his compositions exude a sophistication and a type of musical grace and purity: Kerns music leaves one feeling not just good but noble, writes Wilfrid Sheed in his book The House That George Built. This exalted quality seemed to distinguish his work from the popular dross churned out in profusion by the Tin Pan Alley publishers. Indeed, Kern was hired by New Yorks most prestigious publisher of popular music, the T.B. Harms company.

A key example of Kernian sophistication is the beautiful song They Didnt Believe Me, first heard on Broadway in The Girl From Utah (1914). That tune and another placed in the same show, Youre Here and Im Here, left the young prodigy George Gershwin thunderstruck when he heard them played at a wedding in 1915. Gershwin later said this experience persuaded him that the songs of superior quality and harmonic complexity were the ones coming from musical comedies.

The body of work Kern produced in the 1910s aimed to advance the book musical genre while Americanizing itor at least Anglo-Americanizing it, for he continued working on both sides of the pond and his work retained traces of an English accent for many years. Still, more than anyone, Kern built the bridge leading from the operetta to the modern American musical, retaining a few operetta conventions but updating its plots and settings.

Kern shares the credit for elevating the book musical with his colleagues Guy Bolton and the British novelist P.G. Wodehouse. This team was responsible for seven musical productions mounted in a small Broadway house, the Princess Theatre, between 1915 and 1918. The Princess shows, such as Very Good Eddie and Oh, Boy!, were the first U.S. musicals to aim at a tight integration of dialogue, music, and lyrics, bringing them closer to non-musical comedy and drama. This model reached fruition in 1927 with Kerns Show Boat, whose landmark score, written with Oscar Hammerstein II, embraces some syncopation and blues elements, plus a nod to the Negro spiritual with Ol Man River.

One important Kern work along the road to Show Boat, the hit musical Sally, opened in late 1920. Sally resembled the Princess shows in its plot and structure but was mounted on a grander scale. Florenz Ziegfeld produced the musical as a vehicle for his Follies star Marilyn Miller, who sang the shows most memorable song, Look For the Silver Lining.

As an aside, the songwriting partners Richard Rodgers and Lorenz Hart, who contributed immensely to the elevated sophistication and syncopation of American theater music, made their professional debut in 1920 with six songs in the musical comedy Poor Little Ritz Girl. In the same year, Rodgers and Hart scored the Columbia University Varsity Show along with a third collaborator, Hammerstein, who would reunite with Rodgers in the 1940s and 50s to create a few shows you might be familiar with.

Despite the progress in musical comedy (not forgetting the aforementioned Shuffle Along, the surprise hit of the 1921 season), the revues were still setting the pace for theatrical music in the 1919-1921 period. These were the peak years for the Broadway revues, which ranged from intimate affairs to glitzy extravaganzas. The 1919 edition of the Ziegfeld Follies, with Berlin as principal composer, was widely viewed as the producers greatest achievement. In that production, Berlin introduced the song that perfectly captured Ziegfelds zeal for glorifying the American girl: A Pretty Girl Is Like a Melody.

Instead of trying to top this success working for Ziegfeld in 1920, Berlin took a different tack. With business partner Sam H. Harris, George M. Cohans former producer, Berlin bought a piece of midtown Manhattan real estate and began building the Music Box, the first New York theater expressly designed to stage the work of a single composer. By 1921, Berlin and Harris were ready to mount the first of four annual Music Box Revues, giving the tunesmith his first taste of exercising creative control over a professional production and greatly burnishing Berlins star power. The shows running theme song, Say It With Music, and the heavily syncopated Everybody Step were its most memorable compositions.

Ziegfeld acquired a rival in the high-class revue category in 1919; this was the year that former Ziegfeld dancer George White put on the first of his annual Scandals shows. White made headlines the following year by hiring a young composer to furnish the entire score for the 1920 Scandals. That composer, the 21-year-old George Gershwin, was undoubtedly a rising star. A sought-after accompanist, rehearsal pianist, piano roll recording artist (he had already made rolls of several Berlin and Kern tunes), and former office pianist at the Remick music company, he was now on the payroll of T.B. Harms.

Perhaps the one quality that most set the young Gershwin apart from Berlin and Kern was his familiarity with and appreciation for African American music and musicians. In his teenage years he lived in upper Manhattan and visited Harlem frequently. Both before and after he began making piano rolls for the Standard and Aeolian companies, he met and fraternized with several of New Yorks best piano ticklers, such as Eubie Blake, James P. Johnson, and Luckey Roberts. Furthermore, these men regarded him as a musician of their caliber in his improvisation skills as well as composition abilities. The message of syncopation flowed naturally and unmistakably from Gershwins fingers. He knew intrinsically what he and brother Ira proclaimed in the first song they ever wrote together, in 1918: the real American folk song is a rag.

Another black musician Gershwin befriended in his youth was Will Vodery, a prominent composer and conductor and chief orchestral arranger for the Ziegfeld Follies. Their relationship was close enough that when Gershwin needed work in 1917, Vodery helped him land his first position in the theatrical milieu as rehearsal pianist for an upcoming Ziegfeld revue, Miss 1917. This big-budget production featured tunes by Victor Herbert as well as the composer Gershwin idolized, Kern, and a Bolton-Wodehouse libretto.

Gershwin and Berlin met a little later, in 1919, when Berlin offered his composition That Revolutionary Rag to T.B. Harms for publication; Gershwin sat down to play the brand new tune and immediately improvised an improvement on its chord progression. Introducing himself, he offered his services for the position of Berlins musical secretary, to which Berlin, to his everlasting credit, reportedly replied, What the hell do you want to work for anybody else for? Work for yourself!

Gershwin told Vodery he wanted to work on production musicthe kind Jerome Kern was writing. The theater, he understood, not only had greater prestige than other outlets for popular music, it also had the richest artistic possibilities. He had a few songs interpolated into shows and was invited by a young producer to score what would be marketed as the New Up-to-the-Minute Musical Comedy of Class and Distinction. La La Lucille opened on Broadway in May 1919 and topped 100 performances, a modest success, though none of its songs made much of a hit.

Not to worry, for the youth born under the name Jacob Gershovitz was about to ride the wave of the biggest number-one hit hed ever write. It was a somewhat uncharacteristic effort for Gershwin, a one-step, conceived by him and lyricist Irving Caesar in an attempt to pen an American version of an exotica piece such as one of that moments passing hits, Hindustan. The result of this exercise, Swanee, found its way into one revue before it reached the ears of Al Jolson, who grabbed it for his own show Sinbad and recorded it on January 8, 1920, a few days before the Volstead Act went into effect. All of a sudden the name young Gershovitz had adopted, and his song, were in big letters on the cover of Variety. Like Irving Berlin had in Alexanders Ragtime Band, Swanee struck gold by trading cleverly on a reference to, and syncopated update of, one of the biggest pop hits of the prior century.

Gershwin, in other words, had made a forceful entrance into the world of Broadway by 1920, even before his first George Whites Scandals score reached audiences ears. He didnt produce another notable hit until his third effort for White, a big production number for the 1922 Scandals, Ill Build A Stairway to Paradise. A number of critics consider this song, progressing dramatically up the scale in the verse and landing heavily on blue notes in the chorus, one of the earliest to be imprinted with Gershwins identifiable stylistic traits.

Gershwin wrote many elegant melodies in a mode reminiscent of Kern: one clear example, I submit, would be He Loves and She Loves from 1927s Funny Face. He also did a few self-consciously ultra-syncopated pieces la Berlin, such as Fascinating Rhythm (from Lady Be Good, 1924). His own, utterly unique style, both as a pianist and a composer, expresses a majestic synthesis of Kerns gifts for melody and harmony, Berlins gifts for vitality, simplicity, and popular appeal, and the unleashed power of syncopation as found in jazz and the black music traditions.

Gershwin wrote another notable piece for the 1922 Scandals: the Blue Monday suite, his first endeavor toward writing a vaudeville opera in a Negro idiom, a full decade before he and DuBose Heyward began work on Porgy and Bess.

George White removed the 20-minute sketch, with a cast of singers backed by Paul Whitemans orchestra, from the revue right after its opening night in New York, on the grounds that its somber storyline left the audience too downcast to enjoy the other acts. Working together on Blue Monday led directly to Whiteman requesting an instrumental piece from Gershwin for his experimental February 1924 Aeolian Hall concert, the Rhapsody in Blue.

In sum, the contributions of Berlin, Kern, and Gershwin were all necessary to usher in the turn toward classic, syncopated Broadway show tunes beginning right around 1920. Berlin introduced an early, ersatz form of syncopation, one unmoored from its African American derivation. He successfully deployed this new form of musical verve in an abstractly (or mythologically) American contexta context that was more or less consciously in service to the construction of a positive or idealized self-image for the nation. In that sense, we may say Berlin Americanized, and/or co-opted or diluted or subverted or commercialized, ragtime while popularizing it.

No quotation marks are needed to say Kern Americanized the narrative-based musical, blazing a path from the musical aesthetics of operetta and the British music hall to American popular song and setting the template for artistically successful musical comedies.

Gershwin capitalized upon and extended both of these achievements. He infused the electricity of true syncopation and jazz and blues feeling into musical theater, as well as into popular song and even serious music. The era of Gershwin represents a giant step toward enshrining syncopation at the heart of authentic American music.

The files linked below are hosted at either The Library of Congress National Jukebox Project, The UC Santa Barbara Cylinder Record Archive, Wikipedia, or Jazz-on-line.com. They are in order of first mention in the article.

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1920: The Year Broadway Learned To Syncopate | The Syncopated Times - The Syncopated Times

This Is the Single Best Place To Stargaze on Earth – Popular Mechanics

More than 550 miles away from the South Pole, high atop a frozen plateau in Antarctica lies Dome A. At 13,000 feet above sea-level, the desolate shield of ice is the single best place to catch sight of the stars.

It is notoriously difficult to capture images of the stars that aren't warped by Earth's atmosphere. Astronomers have long searched for locations around the world from which to clearly view the night sky. While places like Hawaii's Mauna Kea Observatories and the telescope arrays in Chile's Atacama desert probe the skies on cloudless nights, their images are still dulled by atmospheric effects. Now scientists believe they've found the very best spot for stargazing, but it likely won't be a tourist attraction anytime soon.

"After a decade of indirect evidence and theoretical reasoning, we finally have direct observational proof of the extraordinarily good conditions at Dome A," astronomer Michael Ashley of the University of New South Wales Sydney in Australia said in a statement.

Ashley was part of an international team of researchers that constructed a small telescopecalled the KunLun Differential Image Motion Monitoratop a 26-foot tower on Dome A. To test their theory that Dome A might be the perfect spot from which to make astronomical observations, the team programmed the telescope to snap pictures once a minute between April 11 and August 4 in 2019the dead of winter in the southern hemisphere. The telescope ultimately captured 45,930 images of the cosmos.

It worked like a charm."The result is that the twinkling of the stars is greatly reduced, and the star images are much sharper and brighter," Ashley said. The team published their findings July 29 in the journal Nature. The results were so good, Science News reports, that astronomers were able to spot celestial objects approximately half the size of those seen from other Earth-bound telescopes.

The telescope atop Dome A rests just above the Planetary boundary layer in Earth's atmosphere. This layer of air, the lowest region of the troposphere, is filled with swirling pockets of warm air. Thanks to this turbulent air, light emitted from stars is distortedit's what gives stars their twinkling appearance. When escaping the effects of the boundary layer, location is key.

At a temperate site, the boundary layer is usually hundreds of metres high or higher, preventing one from reaching the free atmosphere, Zhaohui Shang of the Chinese Academy of Sciences in Beijing told New Scientist. At Dome A, however, Earth's boundary layer is only 45.6 feet high.

In addition to escaping the effects of Earth's atmosphere, Dome A is shrouded in darkness longer than other astronomical observation sites on Earth, meaning the telescope can operate for longer periods of time.

This is critical for making observations about distant stars, for example, Ashley said, "the fact that you can observe them continuously means you can find planets around them much more effectively."

ESA/Hubble & NASA, T. Armandroff

Astronomers have gone to great (and expensive) lengths to get around the issue of atmospheric turbulence. In 1923, German rocketeer Hermann Oberth first proposed sending telescopes into space to surpass the blur. Princeton astrophysicist Lyman Spitzer set the idea into motion several decades later.

NASA tested out the idea in the 1960s and sent up a series of telescopes through the Orbiting Astronomical Observatory Program. Finally, in 1990, the agency launched the famed Hubble Space Telescope. After an issue with one of the mirrors was fixed, the Earth-orbiting telescope returned stunning images with a clarity and sharpness not seen before.

While satellites like Hubble, Kepler and Spitzer send unbelievably crisp images to scientists back on Earth, they're extremely expensive, difficult to fix and take yearsand even decades, in some casesto construct. (Here's looking at you, James Webb.)

Astronomers like Ashley are making the case for the site at Dome A. "[A]nother advantage of making Earth-based observations is you can always add the latest technology to your telescope on the ground, he said. "Whereas in space, everything is delayed."

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This Is the Single Best Place To Stargaze on Earth - Popular Mechanics

Apple TV+ has Acquired the Rights to the Original Astronomy Documentary ‘Fireball’ – Patently Apple

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Apple has acquired the rights to Werner Herzogs astronomy documentary "Fireball" for its Apple Original film slate and will premiere the film on Apple TV Plus in more than 100 territories.

Herzog collaborated with British professor Clive Oppenheimer on the project. The duo teamed on the Academy Award-nominated Antarctic documentary "Encounters at the End of the World" and the Emmy-nominated "Into the Inferno."

Apple announced in their press release this afternoon that the original feature documentary "Fireball will join the Apple Original film slate and will premiere around the world, in over 100 countries, on Apple TV+.

The documentary "Fireball is a Werner Herzog Film production and hails from the Oscar nominated, nine-time Emmy-nominated, BAFTA, Emmy, Peabody, Grierson and RTS Award-winning production company Spring Films. The film is produced by Andr Singer and Lucki Stipeti, executive produced by Richard Melman, and made with the help and support of Sandbox Films."

Herzog is also a proven actor having played the villain in the movie Jack Reacher and in the recurring role of The Client in the Star Wars series The Mandalorian. Herzog was interviewed by INT in 2013 about his role in Jack Reacher as presented below.

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Apple TV+ has Acquired the Rights to the Original Astronomy Documentary 'Fireball' - Patently Apple

Daddy Ducey had his chance to deal with COVID; It’s time to call Mom | What the Devil won’t tell you – TucsonSentinel.com

Posted Jul 24, 2020, 2:11 pm

Blake MorlockTucsonSentinel.com

Gov. Doug Ducey, in his coronavirus press conference Thursday, had encouraging news to share as he told a story of Arizonas improved outlook during the global COVID-19 pandemic.

Case numbers, positive tests and hospitalizations are all trending in toward the better, he told Arizonans. Ducey rather publicly broke with President Donald Trump and announced the state would let school districts make the decision locally about when and how to do the majority of re-openings. He even had Democrat Kathy Hoffman, the state superintendent of public instruction, with him as he addressed reporters in a rare show of bipartisanship.

Arizona has an improving story to tell and Ducey was going to tell it.

We are going to continue to take a responsible approach and the decisions from my office will be guided by public health, Ducey said, concluding an upbeat presentation and inviting the press to ask questions.

The first few reporters all men got up and essentially bought into the framing Ducey had provided.

Then KNXV reporter Nicole Grigg stood up, walked to the microphone and flat socked Ducey in the nose. She challenged his use of New York Times, MSNBC and Johns Hopkins University numbers for Arizona while continuing to ignore home-grown research done jointly by Arizona State University and the University of Arizona. Ducey had told those institutions to stand down their reporting early in the health crisis.

The governor staggered back for a bit pointing out that the New York Times and MSNBC werent cherry-picking numbers to downplay the virus, which has become a cause celeb for his Republican Party.

Then Grigg then planted a rhetorical flurry in Duceys figurative nostrils: How can you say that cases are going down when there is a 60,000 case backlog at one of the states largest testing facilities? How can you say you are making data-informed decisions with incomplete data?

Ducey for a couple weeks now has pointed to a slowing of the increase in the number of cases here as a reason to not lock things down, or even go back to the loose "maybe stay at home" suggestions he issued in the spring.

"Why do you sit here and say that things are positive?," the Phoenix reporter asked.

If this were the old days back on Manor Hill Drive, Ducey would have cradled his bloodied beak and admonished Grigg: Im telling my mom!

Ducey yadda, yaddaed through an answer with a tone I interpreted to drip with condescension and mansplaining. "We don't have the demand for the test," he said.

Ordinarily, Im not a fan of septum-crushing questions. They tend to be counterproductive to getting information because they throw the source on the defensive. Empathy is a much better device to get governors to spill.

In this case, Grigg who's been dogging Ducey daily for months was dead on because its important to pierce the senses of futility and inevitability.

Arizona has positive trends only in the context of a hellscape. A stay-at-home order is still needed to save lives that can be saved. Ducey won't issue one because it's bad for business but how do we have a good economy while living in one of the global hotspots of a pandemic.

I have a neighbor who works at one of Banner Healths clinics andhes being redeployed to University Medical Center, where the staffneeds relief like the 101st Airborne at Bastogne during the Battle of the Bulge. These bands of brothers and sisters are in the Bois Jacques Woods and COVID-19 is absolutely shelling them into oblivion.

Speed is life. The faster we get the virus under control, the morepeople we save. Ducey wants a slower recovery because thats best forbusiness and fits his ideology. Its why hundreds have to die every weekfor God only knows how long.

Arizonas cases are trending downward. Positivity rates after tests are also decreasing. The R-nought number defining how many others each sick person can infect is on the wane. Fine. Arizona is still are reporting more four to five times the daily infections than the 446 million people living in the European Union.

Our state has lost more lives to coronavirus than were killed on 9/11.

Let me throw a couple other numbers at you, Dear Reader. If Arizona were a country, it would rank between Laos and Paraguay in descending order of total population. Those two (we used to call them) third-world countries have reported 36 combined deaths from COVID-19.

Disclaimer: Laos says they have zero deaths. I don't buy that for a second because because communist countries arent known for transparency. However, they did impose a lockdown and strict quarantine measures, taking a much stronger approach than the U.S. The argument in Laos is whether or not the numbers are zero, or just low. It's not whether the country is a global hotspot like Arizona has become.

While polls show Americans dont buy the official line from the the United States of Trumpia, we run the risk of accepting an unacceptably low bar as proof of success.

For instance, it is increasingly apparent that given a choice between Ducey and Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, the state is far better off with Ducey in charge. Hes not incompetent maniac insisting everything is great as his state is ravaged by the pandemic.

Over in Texas, my family is stuck with Gov. Gregg Abbott, who I think wants to do right by the Lone Star population but hes looking over his shoulder at a lieutenant governor telling the world there are better things than living. I suppose thats true, but freedom from wearing a strap of cloth over ones face isnt one of them. Fearing a primary challenge, Abbott has been forced to hold back on the kinds of measures that could bend the curve. There are a lot worse things than losing the governorship.

Ducey is doing all that "he can do" but that's a different amount than "what can be done." The governor is no new-school sociopath. He's an old-fashioned laissez-faire conservative, who thinks the government should have a light touch interfering with the economy.

That's fair, except that he's resistant to taking further (half-)measures to interfere with coronavirus because that would be interfering with the economy.

The spring rounds of stay-at-home-orders were supposed to get the virus under control. Failure to keep them in place long enough to work, lead the rise in new cases. Its also going to likely lead to another trillion-dollars in spending probably about twice the Toxic Asset Relief Program.

We're spending this money because Republicans of the new and old schools, aren't capable of believing this pandemic requires a sustained public response.

I'm not denying that Ducey has taken some action in that he shut down bars, gyms and other public facilities (or at least the ones that don't flaunt their flouting of the order). That was when coronavirus seemed destined to climb to 6,000 cases a day. So it seems like Arizona is going to have to get used to the horrible and be thankful we haven't climbed into the absolutely horrific.

No one's explained how an economy is supposed to improve during a pandemic, when the consumer base is filled with a bunch of people afraid their names would be added to the body count.

My first column about COVID-19 predicted the governor and the Republicans in the Legislature were going to have overcome their allergy to the notion of public action in order to fix things.

A pandemic screams for the sort of collective public action that Ayn Rand would hate.

However, the state and national response to the global pandemic is an increasingly political game of Whos your daddy?

Daddy is the Republicans, more specifically, the MAGAs. Mommy is the Democrats, specifically women and a bunch of men who are too wimpy to let mere human lives fuel an economy chugging along uninterrupted by stay-at-home orders.

I didn't invent this construct and it's been used against the Left for years. Empathy is fine for sniffles but tough guys are required when things get dangerous.

In letting COVID-19 fly free, Daddy will justify the body counts by saying, I did what I had to do to protect this family!

This masculine versus feminine approach to the virus has even been noticed by Duceys administration, who unveiled an ad to undercut it, even as they are perpetuating it. The 30-second spot released by the state depicts a boxer equating masks to gloves, saying They dont make me weak.

Well, Ill tell you what strong looked like. It looked like a woman at a microphone smashing through the bubble because thats what journalists do.

And it looks like Mayor Regina Romero of Tucson and Kate Gallego of Phoenix issuing a must-wear-mask directive that correlates almost precisely to Arizonas turn-around because thats what strong leaders do. Ducey kinda wimped out and left the hard decisions to local government leaders.

Absent context, Ducey is claiming progress.

The question is whether Arizona and America will shut up and let Daddy call the shots, because he knows what's best and is strong enough to do what's right.

The country and Arizona have gone for it in the past. We have taken care of Daddy so Daddy can take careof us all the way to mass incarceration, ignoring climatechange, tax cuts for the rich, a wealth gap for the ages and a stupidwar in Iraq. Maybe coronaviruswill be the bridge too far.

Theres no victory laps. Theres no celebrations, Ducey said, as if he could use a pat on the back. Everything put up here is informed by the data.

That may be true, but its filtered through an ideology out of sync with the times.

Its increasingly clear Arizona, Texas and Florida, its clear that Daddy has an agenda other than preventing deaths. Its also becoming clear, we might have to go get Mom.

Blake Morlock is a journalist who has spent 20 years covering government in Arizona and also worked in Democratic political communications. Now hes telling you things that the Devil wont.

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Daddy Ducey had his chance to deal with COVID; It's time to call Mom | What the Devil won't tell you - TucsonSentinel.com

Voters Across The Nation Unite To #LetHerSpeak! – Los Alamos Reporter

BY LAURA BURROWSLos Alamos Libertarian Party

On August 8 at 10:30 a.m., protesters are gathering in the first nationwide #LetHerSpeak driving protest in counties all across the nation. The Los Alamos Libertarian Party will lead a group of local community members in a COVID-safe demonstration, driving convoy style down Trinity Drive, and Diamond and Central (see google maps specific route plan). They will be decorating their cars parade-style and will go live together on their social media channels.

This is a coordinated effort across the nation to protest the Commission on Presidential Debates continued decision to silence the Libertarian Nominee for the United States President, Dr. Jo Jorgensen, and all third parties are who are listed on the presidential ballot.

One hundred years ago this year, women were taking to the streets to protest the government to recognize their rights as sovereign citizens, and their right to be heard in elections, led by the Women Voters Coalition. The WVC also created the first presidential debates to give American voters a greater understanding of all their presidential candidates. In 1987, the Commission on Presidential Debates was formed to take over sponsorship of the debate and boxed the WVC out.

The CPD created polling restrictions to not allow third-parties in the debate by selecting random polls to determine who is polling above 15%. The catch? Most of these polls do not even mention a 3rd party candidate. In 2012, the minimum to participate was 10%, but when Gary Johnson got 12%, the CPD raised the polling requirement to 15%. Voters are being left in the dark with systemic voter manipulation.

We demand polling restrictions are changed to quantifiable results that cannot be manipulated by the CPD. Third parties who are listed as options on American ballots shall be allowed to debate so that Americans can properly compare their choices.

Its been 100 years since the 19th amendment was passed, and Dr. Jo Jorgensen, the only female candidate (who is highly qualified), is still being silenced by the CPD. Dr. Jo Jorgensen has her Ph.D. in Organizational Psychology, is a Senior Lecturer at Clemson University, is an accomplished entrepreneur, and has a pristine record. The Libertarian Party is one of the only parties in the U.S. that has secured ballot access for presidential candidates in all 50 states. She is an educated and articulate woman with fresh ideas, and with as divided as the American public is, she deserves to be heard.

Government is too big, too bossy, too nosy, and, worst of all, often hurts the very people it intends to help. The government doesnt work; liberty and freedom do Dr. Jo Jorgensen

We invite all local press to participate in this grassroots event and meet us at the Ashley Pond Parking Lot on 20th Street and Trinity Drive on August 8 at 9:45 a.m. for a short rally before the convoy begins and go live with this historic event!

All participants will be wearing masks and be staying with their cars.

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Voters Across The Nation Unite To #LetHerSpeak! - Los Alamos Reporter

Government of Canada protecting the Lake Winnipeg basin Franais – Canada NewsWire

WINNIPEG, MB, July30, 2020 /CNW/ -The Lake Winnipeg basin is the second-largest watershed in Canada, covering close to onemillion squarekilometres, which span over four provinces and four states. Home to sevenmillion people, the basin is an important freshwater resource. Over the past several decades, Lake Winnipeg has faced significant challenges to its water quality.

Today, Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Environment and Climate Change, Terry Duguid, on behalf of the Minister of Environment and Climate Change, the Honourable Jonathan Wilkinson, announced $1.18million to support 15new projects under the Lake Winnipeg Basin Program.

These projects will address key water-quality issues in the Lake Winnipeg basin, including addressing algae growth, enhancing collaboration throughout the basin, and engaging Indigenous Peoples in freshwater management.

The Parliamentary Secretary was joined today by representatives from the University of Manitoba and the Manitoba Metis Federation. One of the projects, carried out by the University of Manitoba in collaboration with the Manitoba Metis Federation, received $50,000 to expand community-based water-monitoring efforts and create a water-weather keeper program. The Manitoba Metis Federation will be receiving an additional $130,000 to lead another project that aims to increase the number of Metis citizen scientists measuring phosphorus concentrations and gather traditional knowledge on the health of Lake Winnipeg. Through investments like these, the Government of Canada is protecting fresh water across the country.

Quotes

"Projects likes these will have a positive impact on our community, economy, and natural environment. Lake Winnipeg is a significant resource to numerous communities and Indigenous Peoples across the basin, generating millions of dollars each year. It is so encouraging to see Canadians stepping up with innovative and practical ways to address some of our most pressing freshwater challenges."Terry Duguid, Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Environment and Climate Change

"These innovative local projects will help address freshwater issues across the Lake Winnipeg basin through action and collaborative efforts. By working together, we have made important strides in understanding ongoing and emerging threats to Lake Winnipeg's water quality and ecosystem health to preserve this vital resource for future generations."The Honourable Jonathan Wilkinson, Minister of Environment and Climate Change

Quick facts

Associated links

Environment and Climate Change Canada's Twitter page

Environment and Climate Change Canada's Facebook page

SOURCE Environment and Climate Change Canada

For further information: Moira Kelly, Press Secretary, Office of the Minister of Environment and Climate Change, 819-271-6218, [emailprotected]; Media Relations, Environment and Climate Change Canada, 819-938-3338 or 1-844-836-7799 (toll-free), [emailprotected]

http://www.ec.gc.ca

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Government of Canada protecting the Lake Winnipeg basin Franais - Canada NewsWire

Blogger sued by TV channel and editor over ‘baseless allegations’ – Deccan Herald

The Madras High Court on Wednesday restrained YouTuber Maridhas from uploading defamatory videos against a Tamil television channel and its journalists while directing him to remove all such videos posted earlier.

The action came after News18 Tamil Nadu news channel, its senior editor M Gunasekaran and senior anchor-cum-producer Jeeva Sagapthan filed a defamation suit seeking damages of Rs 1.5 crore from Maridhas.

Justice C V Karthikeyan, admitting the civil and criminal defamation suit, opined that Maridhas cannot make baseless allegations against the television channel and asked him to remove the videos that have been posted earlier on YouTube.

The judge also restrained Maridhas, who also runs a website, from uploading defamatory videos against the television news channel. Maridhas had, in a video posted on July 5, alleged that several journalists working at the channel, including editor Gunasekaran, are biased towards DMK and DK and are acting on behalf of these political parties.

The vlogger had sent an e-mail to the News18 management seeking action against Gunasekaran and others for their actions. A few days later, Maridhas posted another video claiming that he received an e-mail from the management of the television channel promising action against the journalists.

However, News18 Tamil Nadu filed a complaint with the police against the fake e-mail. Maridhas video had led to a major uproar in Tamil Nadu with opposition parties accusing him of acting at the behest of BJP by targeting journalists.

In the defamation suit, the news channel and the two journalists said Maridhas posted three videos on July 5, July 10, and July 11 levelling baseless allegations against them by claiming they are controlled by and biased towards DMK and DK.

The defamation suit said the allegations by Maridhas has cast a cloud of doubt in the mind of the viewers of News 18 Tamil Nadu which results in grave harm and injury to TV18 Broadcast Limited, the company which owns the channel, that thrives on the trust of the public.

The defendant (Maridhas) has promulgated the entire scheme posting the defamatory videos with a pre-planned ulterior motive to disrupt the independent functioning of the 1st plaintiff (the channel) and to discredit and defame the plaintiffs (two journalists herein, the petition said.

In the petition, Gunasekaran and Jeeva Sagapthan said Maridhas has not only resorted to the agenda of publicly defaming and spreading fake news against them but has also spoken about their personal lives without any verification or comments from them.

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Blogger sued by TV channel and editor over 'baseless allegations' - Deccan Herald

From Felix Arvid to PewDiePie: Is He Going to Leave Youtube for Good? – Tech Times

PewDiePie is one of the most famous YouTubers during his prime time. He is well known for streaming online games. Most of the popular videos consist of game reviews, game reaction videos, and other funny videos. He plays mostly games likeMinecraft,The Last of Us,Animal Crossing, and more popular games, including those in Y8.com.

(Photo : Screenshot from Twitter post of @PewDiePiePhotos)How Did Felix Arvid Became the Famous PewDiePie? Here's Why He Quit YouTube

Also Read: Viral Video of 'Karen' aka 'Panera Patty' Claiming Face Masks Won't Stop COVID-19 Since Pants Can't Stop 'Farts Smells'

He also made the famous video called Jabba the Hutt. The video was dedicated to his beloved dog. Jabba the Hut is a pug who has only one eye working. PewDiePie's real name is Felix Arvid Ulf Kjellberg.

According toLooper's report, the Swedish YouTube vlogger and comedian began uploading his contents on YouTube starting in 2010 and becoming one of the site's biggest influencers as years passed. He was the first YouTuber to achieve 100 million and received the award as the most-watched YouTuber in 2019 as he reached 4 billion views.

Also Read:Did Kanye West Claim the Kardashians Are Hypnotizing Him in Super Creepy Movie 'Get Out'?

At that time, he was also in the middle of a controversy because of the meme "Subscribe to PewDiePie." The meme was criticized after some of his fans used it to vandalized a World War II memorial. However, the report stated that he originally created the meme to beat T-series in the Guinness record.

Things got worse after a killer used his meme in a mass shooting in New Zealand. Although he faced some issues during his prime time, he was still able to gain followers. But, he previously announced that he was taking a break for the streaming world.

iNewsreported that PewDiePie previously announced, using his PewNews, that he will no longer publish any content on his YouTube channel because he is tired.

(Photo : Screenshot from Twitter post of @PewDiePiePhotos)How Did Felix Arvid Became the Famous PewDiePie? Here's Why He Quit YouTube

"I am taking a break from YouTube next year," said PewDiePie.

"I wanted to say it in advance because I made up my mind," he added.

The YouTuber reiterated that he's really tired and didn't know if his fans can notice it. He confirmed in 2019 that he'll be away for a while, and wanted to give his loyal fans a heads up of his disappearance.

However, he returned to Streaming after a month-long break. According toDexerto's report, PewDiePie said that he didn't do much during his break from the video platform. He said that he has finally broken his 10-year streak of daily YouTube uploads and has successfully taken a break from his career.

"I have returned!" he announced at the start of his video on Feb. 21.

He also confirmed that there will be some changes he'll do gradually in his future content. The YouTuber admitted that there are also other things that he wanted to spend his time with, rather than just uploading videos day by day.

That's all for now. For more interesting stories, keep your tabs on TechTimes!

Also Read: [VIRAL] BLACKPINK Reality Show's 'Meal Challenge': S.Korea Girlband is Now Youtube's Most Subscribed Female Artist

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From Felix Arvid to PewDiePie: Is He Going to Leave Youtube for Good? - Tech Times

Lydia Jazmine not wallowing in lockdown blues – The Observer

Lydia Jazmine, 29, is a recording artiste known for her great sense of fashion and angelic voice. Her songs include You And Me, Olindaki, Masuuka, Gimpe and Nkwatako, which is her latest, among others. As Jazmines manager Ronnie Mulindwa drove her to Nassim Studios, Quick Talk had a chat with her.

Good afternoon, Lydia!

Yes, good afternoon to you, Quick Talk!

You may need no introduction, but tell me about yourself still.

Im Lydia Nabawanuka. I attended Victoria Nile school then Marys school Namaliga and completed my high school at Cityland College Matugga [where she reportedly met Feffe Bussi, who attests to her being a very bright student].

I later went to Multitech Business School where I graduated with a Bachelor of Business Administration and Management. I come from a family of five but we are nine children in total.

How do you end up in music yet you studied business?

Music has always been part of me; however, Im still into business but doing music more. I have always been singing since nursery, in choirs too but then I started singing professionally in my second year at university.

Didnt your parents have a problem with your career choice?

My parents were very supportive of everything I did. [Quick Talk notices early that Lydia is not the conversational kind]

Moving on, what is your other hobby?

I like fashion a lot; it has always been my second passion after music. [That explains her always impeccable look.]

Are you doing fashion for business or just dressing up?

[Smiling] No, the fashion I do is for me, not business or anything else.

What do you do in your free time?

I spend most of my free time with family; I love my family very much.

Have you ever thought of marriage and starting your own family?

Yeah [silence. Quick Talk tries to get her to say more] I do and very soon.

So, how many children would you love to have? [Laughs] I cant tell, because I might say two and then give birth to twins; its only Gods plan. But anyway, I would love to have three children. [Quick Talk hopes the universe doesnt give her triplets, now!]

Would you encourage your children to follow in your footsteps?

Well, I cant stop any of my children from doing what they like, because I was not stopped at any time.

What is your ideal man, Lydia?

I would like a man who cares and understands me, because this kind of job needs one to be understanding.

Would you like your man metrosexual?

Yeah, of course!

Wouldnt that leave you insecure?

Not really; if we ladies take care of our looks, where is the problem if my man likes taking care of his looks? Its so okay with me.

Meanwhile, how has this lockdown treated you?

It has really affected musicians generally, because we used to earn from performances and concerts, something that is no more.

How are you making ends meet?

There are many things Im doing that I cant disclose, but we survive through recording our songs and uploading them online. [At Makindye, a delivery guy brings a number of hot tee shirts in different colours and Lydia chooses a white, beautiful one].

Thats a nice one. Is white your favourite colour?

Not really; I dont have a specific colour. I wear any colour as long as I have liked it.

Alright, back to coronavirus; has joining politics crossed your mind during this lockdown?

No way. I used to like politics when I was younger, but have no interest now.

What made you change your mind?

Politics in Uganda is a risky game. It puts one at risk.Turning to cooking, which dish do you cook best?

Rice, beef, chicken and many others. [Raising her perfectly-manicured long nails, she runs them through her beautiful wig. But before Quick Talk can ask how she fares in the kitchen without breaking a nail, her phone rings. Nassim Studios is ready for her. She signals for me to wind up the interview.]

Any message for the youth looking up to you?All I can say is work hard and never give up your dreams.

According to ugandanbuzz.com:

Lydia was born on July 27, 1991 in Mukono town to William Kasugi and Scolastica Nakanwagi. After her parents divorce, her mother raised her and four of her siblings, singlehandedly.

Her music career started in a high school choir before she later joined Passover Harvest Centre and Watoto Church choirs.At university, she partnered with guitarist Harry Lwanga to do acoustic covers in bars as a way to raise her tuition.

She joined mainstream entertainment backing Radio and Weasel, Pallaso, Sheebah and Bebe Cool on stage and/or in studio.Her big break came in 2014 withYou Know, featuring Rabadaba.

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Lydia Jazmine not wallowing in lockdown blues - The Observer

Meet the jet-setting carfluencers raking in millions by posing with Ferraris and driving supercars on Ins – The Irish Sun

SITTING back in the plush back seat of 'the most luxurious car ever made', Supercar Blondie is handed a glass of bubbly and asked to pose for a photo that will go on to get hundreds of thousands of likes.

It's just another day in the life of the glamorous Aussie - real name Alex Hirschi - who has now been named the richest supercar influencer in the world, earning $2million (1.55million) a year.

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The 34-year-old is one of many stunning Instagram stars who are regularly plied with gifts, flown across the world and handed a huge pay check for promoting supercars on their social media pages.

With millions of followers between them, the best of the best can bring in thousands of enquiries within minutes of posting reviews or videos of them driving a swanky new car in an exotic location.

But while Alex lives life in the fast lane now, her journey getting there has had some bumps in the road, having faced nasty sexist comments - and no days off for her first few years setting up her business.

Speaking to Sun Online, Alex reveals a glimpse inside the glam life of a supercar influencer, from travelling the world nine months of the year to hanging out with the Top Gear boys.

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But this blonde bombshell isn't the only gorgeous lady doing it for the girls.

Here, we're also taking a look at the top female players joining her in the motor industry...

Instagram followers: 6.4 million

The blonde beauty, who has lived in Dubai since 2008, worked in radio before she became a supercar influencer on social media.

She says: "At first my mum and dad were like 'What? What is this? What are you doing? Youre throwing away your career on the radio to do, what?'

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"And I was like, well... I film cars...

"They didnt really understand at first, but it kind of hit home in their small country town where they grew up when people were actually watching me and coming up to them and talking to them about it - so now theyre really proud."

Alex started building up her social media page for fun a few years ago, sharing clips and photos of her own growing supercar collection - always having had a passion for it.

As her page and personal reviews slowly gained more and more followers, she caught the attention of brands and manufacturers - and it's grown from there.

She's now paid to promote different cars with her own reviews, professional photos in locations around the world and by sharing competitions on her page.

But when Alex ditched her career on the radio to be a supercar influencer, men in the industry apparently told her she "didn't know anything about cars".

She adds: "It's something I've just had to really push through. There werent many girls doing this in the car world.

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"Typically when you see a girl around a car - and this has been the case for decades - usually the girl is like an accessory to the car and the girl would lie semi naked on the hood, seen as a sex symbol.

"When you get someone like me who is not doing that and actually wants to be taken a bit more seriously, I did get a lot of push backs from the men in this world.

"But I just thought, do you know what? Ive got to keep going because you know that the more you see women in this role around cars then the more normal its going to become."

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As the highest earning car influencer Alex can travel the world, rub shoulders with her favourite celebs and attend the most exclusive, glitzy car events.

"Last year I was actually travelling nine out of the 12 months of the year in a different country," she confesses.

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"Ive been to some of the most interesting places. I went to Mexico City and met up with some supercar owners there and they showed me around the city and they had full bulletproof vehicles following us just in case anything happened."

As Supercar Blondie, Alex was also able to meet her childhood TV heroes, Top Gear's Richard Hammond and James May - filming an episode with them for her YouTube channel.

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"They were so cool. Ive watched these guys for years and here I am filming for them, it was so crazy," she says.

But being a supercar influencer isn't always an easy ride.

"Yes my job is kind of cool," Alex says. "But it didnt come just overnight. Obviously this was a few years in the making and I have never worked so hard in my life.

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"I know it looks like a fun and happy-go-lucky kind of career but at the end of the day Im running a business.

"In the first few years that I started uploading videos, I didnt even take one day off, no weekends, no holidays. Just kept going out every single day and filming and travelling around the world.

"Its exhausting - but at the same time it pays off if youre going to take it seriously."

The influencer plans to make her OWN car in the next two years now too - designed with women in mind.

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She says: "Id team up with a car manufacturer who has all the expertise and know-how to manufacture the car and, because Ive seen some of the coolest cars in the world, I would kind of just combine all the coolest features and put them into the car that I design and I think it could be a really special car.

"I like that masculine, aggressive look but a lot of supercars are actually designed around a man and not designed around a woman so there are features in there that I would want for a female to feel comfortable in the car.

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"Like mirrors on the sun-visors, youll get into some supercars and there are just no mirrors anywhere - and when I get out to go to a restaurant or whatever I want to be able to quickly check that I havent smudged my eyeliner all the way down my cheek or something."

She adds: "A compartment for a handbag, I would love that. Like right there next to you so you know exactly where it is to be able to get things out of it while youre driving.

"And a lift function to get in when youve got heels on, the car will lift up so its not as difficult to get in and out of the car."

In recent years, Alex has begun to realise she isn't the only woman supercar fanatic or influencer out there.

She admits: "There are so many women into cars and when I first started this and Id go to car events it would pretty much be just me and a whole bunch of guys.

"I would be very lucky if I would see another woman there.

"But now that I have been more established in the industry, I feel a lot more girls are coming out to these car events.

"I didnt think that I would have an impact like that so for me, just doing something that I love, around cars, and then actually having an impact and making other women feel more comfortable, that makes it all worth it."

Now, here's a look at more of the world's top women making waves in the motor industry...

Instagram followers: 108,000

Brit influencer Becky Evans, like Alex, is obsessed with cars and has turned her passion into an impressive career, having first started out in racing and now becoming an influencer.

The 26-year-old has already spent two decades gaining experience in the automotive industry.

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Her Girls Guide To series, where she explains the pros and cons of various cars, are her highest performing videos - yet she reckons her audience is 90 per cent male.

Her impressive social media career has led to a collaboration with Redbull and a gig as the host of the online show Drift Queen.

In an interview with Marie Claire, she said the internet was shocked to see a young girl working on a car when she first started out her career.

"Once I got out of racing, I wanted to stay around cars, so I posted photos of the modification I did on my car at the time," she told the news outlet.

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"And when I built my BMW E-21 and brought that out, things went nuts. It was like the internet had not seen a young girl with [a] vintage car before."

However she insists she's never experienced sexism herself in the industry.

She added: "If anything, its not sexism that Ive encountered, but elitism: if I have experienced sexism its gone straight over my head."

Instagram followers: 18,900

Patrice Banks, the woman behind Girls Auto Clinic on Instagram, is on a mission to inspire women to repair their own cars.

It all started when she attempted to find a female mechanic online, and was instead directed to a series of stock images of women working on cars in bikinis.

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Her motto is: If you cant find a female mechanic, become one!

Her Philadelphia clinic - ran by women only - now provides manicures and pedicures while ladies wait for their cars to be fixed.

Instagram followers: 361,000 followers

German beauty Sophia Floersch is a 19-year-old racecar driver and while she describes herself as "just a normal girl" on her Instagram, she is a very well recognised player in the industry.

She has competed in the FIA Formula 3 Championship with Campos Racing, as well as previously racing in the Formula Regional European Championship, Formula 4 in both Germany and Italy, as well as the Ginetta Junior Championship.

Sophia also won the award for World Comeback of the Year at the 2020 Laureus World Sports Awards in February, after being involved in a horrific crash in 2018.

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Sophia fractured her spine in the smash at the Macau Grand Prix, after appearing to lose control on a tight right-hand corner - at 170mph.

After an amazing recovery, she told formula1.com earlier this year: "For me, its important to get better each race weekend, work together with the team and have fun. Its going to be a great year."

Despite being in an industry dominated by men, Sophia is fearlessly feminine and doesnt shy away from posting photos on social media in glamorous bikinis too.

Instagram followers: 416,000

Sonja Reid is most famous for being a gamer, but she is a rising supercar influencer too.

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WORMS FEARSHas your child got threadworms? Here's the symptoms - and how cure them

WE LIVE ON AIR'Breatharian' couple claim they have barely eaten for NINE YEARS

Hard LuckA deadly breed of spider which gives bite victims painful ERECTIONS is in the UK

TO CATCH A CHEATFurious wife beats and strips her husband's suspected mistress in the street - but crowd does nothing

Filming funWhere was hit comedy RTE series The Young Offenders filmed?

pros of protonIrish grandad hails the benefits of proton therapy in prostate cancer battle

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The Canadian living in Los Angeles, 29, collaborates on sponsored posts with Karma Automotive, a Southern California vehicle manufacturer.

She's since shared photos of her posing beside cars, taking part in motor events and promoting her own car collection online too - with big names being promoted in each of her posts.

Sonja is also regularly invited along to automotive events and posts photos and videos from each appearance to her 416,000 followers. Not a bad job!

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Meet the jet-setting carfluencers raking in millions by posing with Ferraris and driving supercars on Ins - The Irish Sun

Over 2 lakh students apply for arts, science colleges in Tamil Nadu within days – The News Minute

Students applying for arts and science courses in Tamil Nadu can upload certificates from August 1 to August 10.

The Tamil Nadu government started issuing application forms for arts and science colleges on July 20. For the first time, the government has decided to completely switch to online applications due to the coronavirus-induced lockdown.

According to a press release issued by the state government, on July 21 over 1,00,000 students applied for various courses at colleges across Tamil Nadu. On July 22, around 53,342 students applied and on June 23, around 34,924 students applied for various colleges in Tamil Nadu. On July 24, about 20,351 students applied for arts and science colleges in the state.

So far, 2,09,237 students have applied for various arts and science courses, of which 1,27,975 students paid the application fees. Students can apply for arts and science admissions till July 31.

The government has postponed the deadline for uploading original certificates. Higher secondary schools have started issuing mark sheets from Saturday (July 25).

As a result, students demanded the government extend the time period for uploading original marksheets and certificates.

Accepting the demand, the government postponed the process to August 1. As per the earlier announcement, the students were to upload their original marksheets between July 25 and August 5. However, as per the new schedule, the students can upload certificates from August 1 to August 10.

The government has set up a helpline to support students applying for admissions. Students who have queries can clear their doubts by contacting the phone numbers mentioned on the Tamil Nadu government's arts and science colleges admissions website.

One of the professors handling the help desk said, The students have been calling and asking a few queries. The students can login and register for even five colleges at a time, but the students apply for one college and click complete. This is a mistake done by many students and we have been asked for help. So, we tell the students that they should create a new ID and password and apply afresh for the remaining colleges. Hence, students should keep in mind that they can apply for more than one college at a time.

The students also make mistakes while entering their marks or registration numbers, the professor said. Even if the students upload wrong information for a column, they need not worry. The students can rectify the error during the certificate verification process, said the professor. However, the government is yet to make an announcement on the certificate verification process.

The professor said a few students asked about courses available at certain colleges. However, we guided them to refer to the college website or talk to the officials of the college, said the professor.

Students can apply for colleges through the website http://www.tngasa.in.

See the article here:

Over 2 lakh students apply for arts, science colleges in Tamil Nadu within days - The News Minute

Joe Rogan is Moving to Texas, Says There’s More Freedom There – Showbiz Cheat Sheet

Podcaster and UFC commentator Joe Rogan says he plans on moving to Texas. Rogan, who has come under fire recently for making contentious comments about face masks, claims that a big portion of his plan is thanks to having more freedom in a place like Texas, compared to California. However, it seems there could be another incentive in the mix Rogan might be able to take advantage of some hefty tax breaks if he does move.

RELATED: How Joe Rogan Reacted to Going Bald

During a recent episode of The Joe Rogan Experience, the podcaster and comedian claimed that hes getting ready to ditch California and move to Texas.

Rogan said, Im going to go to Texas. I just want to go somewhere in the center of the country, somewhere where its easy to travel to both places and somewhere where you have a little bit more freedom.

Rogan then went on to claim that California is overpopulated. He claimed, Also, I think that where we live right here in Los Angeles is overcrowded. I think most of the time its not a problem. But I think its exposing the fact that its a real issue when you look at the number of people that are catching [COVID-19] because of this overpopulation issue. When you look at the traffic, you look at the economic despair, when you look at the homelessness problem that has accelerated radically over the last decade, I think there are too many people here.

One topic Rogan didnt address, however, is the major tax break hed gain from moving to Texas. As reported by Newsweek, Rogan could enjoy a huge savings on individual income taxes, which are not gathered in Texas. On his $100 million Spotify deal, this could mean a savings of up to $13 million.

While it is unclear if this is something Rogan has factored into his decision to move, it would dovetail into the ongoing realization that many fans are having regarding Rogans gradual disconnect from the common man his podcast tends to shoot for.

Some fans of Joe Rogan think the podcaster will never actually move to Texas, because marijuana is not legalized in the state.

One Redditor wrote, Answer: hes not, and never will move to Texas. Why? Weed is a felony here and he couldnt handle the heat. These same reasons apply to every other LA comedian saying the same thing.

Another user pointed out that Rogan is probably aiming for the tax breaks, really. They added that they expect celebs will be less willing to go to Texas for the podcast, however. You can buy a hell of a mansion and duck Cali taxes in Texas. How realistic is it to make celebrities fly out regularly to do the podcast though? Like theyll fly out to NY or to LA to do an entire press junket, but to do one podcast and fly back? they asked.

Like 0.01% of the people threatening to leave California will actually do it, joked another fan.

I think he should stop whining. Hes still making about $75,000 per podcast, doing UFC commentary and living in his gated community, pointed out another fan.

Meanwhile, Joe Rogan has been facing some backlash from fans after various comments hes made about coronavirus and masks.

During an episode of his podcast starring Bill Burr, Rogan claimed that wearing a face mask is for b*tches.

Burr told Rogan, I dont want to start this bullsh*t. Im not going to sit here with no medical degree, listening to you with no medical degree, with an American flag behind you, smoking a cigar, acting like we know whats up better than the CDC. All I do is I watch the news once every two weeks. Im like Mask or no mask? Still mask? Alright, masks. Thats all I give a f**k about.

Burr then added, Oh God youre so tough with your f*cking open nose and throat. Gee Joe, and your five oclock shadow. This is a man right here! A man doesnt wear a mask! Why does it always become like that, it always becomes the man versus the b*tch.

Some fans were also riled up to find out that Joe Rogan was purchasing COVID-19 testing for all of his various guests and friends who appeared on the show. While some felt this was a valid safety precaution, others felt it was another example of Rogans wealth and influence at play.

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Joe Rogan is Moving to Texas, Says There's More Freedom There - Showbiz Cheat Sheet

Opinion: Turkey closing window on press freedom – DW (English)

Turkey is taking steps to close the window on press freedom once and for all. News of more restrictions comes as no surprise: Dozens of journalists have been unlawfully detained and given long prison sentences in unfair trials across Turkey, especially since the failed coup attempt in July 2016. Media pluralism has been all but destroyed. Until recently, social media platforms represented the last safe haven for critical Turkish journalists.

Read more:Generation Z puts pressure on Turkey's Erdogan

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan is politically weakened, and has been roundly criticized on social media sites for his mishandling of the coronavirus pandemic Turkey boasts more than 37 million Facebook users, as well as 16 million on Twitter. Now Erdogan is trying to silence his critics by forcing national controls on international social media platforms.

On Tuesday, Turkey's parliament approved changes to its 2007 law on internet crimes a heavily used tool for silencing online media outlets. Prosecutorial authorities often use it to bring criminal charges against individuals on the grounds that they have insulted the nation or pose a threat to national security.

Mihr's work concentrates on the situation facing journalists in Turkey

But these most recent change will force social media platforms with more than 1 million daily users to appoint a permanent representative in Turkey. That representative will act as the contact person for Turkish authorities, to deal with government complaints against content on their platforms involving possible criminal charges or invasions of privacy.

Companies that fail to appoint a representative will face sanctions.

Turkish authorities also want sites to create a mechanism for removing content within 48 hours of receiving an invasion of privacy complaint or court order. If insulting content is not then immediately removed, sites will be blocked within four hours.Internet providers that fail to communicate government complaints to the responsible partywill face heavy fines.

Read more:Turkey's Erdogan clamps down further on media amid coronavirus crisis

Reporters Without Borders rejects the expansion of Turkey's internet law. It's clear that the aim of the law is to control social media platforms in order to smother growingpolitical unrest. That will also restrict access to independent information, something that is vitally important in a society as highly polarized as Turkey is today.

The expansion of the law comes at a time when online censorship has been stepped up. Back in 2018, Turkish courts blocked access to at least 2,950 news articles and other journalistic content including research and reports on political corruption, cronyism and human rights and labor abuses. In addition, countless other sources of information have simply been blocked by authorities without court approval.

Read more:Tough times for journalism in Recep Tayyip Erdogan's Turkey

Turkey's expansion of its internet law confirms what we have been saying all along: Authoritarian regimes are pointing to the precedent set by, among others, Germany's 2017 Network Enforcement Act (NetzDG), a measure to fight hate speech, as justification for passing new laws that tighten their control of social media.

Christian Mihr is the director of Reporters Without Borders Germany, an international NGO engaged in securing press freedom and fighting censorship. Among other things, Mihr concentrates extensively on the situation facing journalists in Turkey.

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Opinion: Turkey closing window on press freedom - DW (English)