Posts

A journal: A quick tour of the playground, a concrete strip of landing-field proportions. Kids running, doing calisthenics, playing volleyball. Typical American scene except hardly anyone speaks English. The bell rings. Kids scatter to class. First item of business: Fabian Serrano, 9, returns after a three-day suspension for scrawling graffiti on a wall. Mother, sister and aunt come into my office, concerned and apologetic. “You must respect your school as much as your home,” intones vice principal Peter Riddal....

Now that Warner Bros., a studio that has invested in both formats, has said it will abandon HD DVD by June, will sales take off? Not necessarily. Amid the speculation on whether the death of HD DVDs will be slow or swift, a third scenario has begun to seem likely: that the entire market for high-definition discs will wither as consumers download movies instead. In the bitter five-year struggle over formats, the technology for downloading movies has accelerated, and now a number of firms are poised to make discs irrelevant....

Today, he is a fugitive, in hiding in Pakistan. After spotting him at a funeral, NEWSWEEK’s Sami Yousafzai sought Jan out for an interview. Go-betweens instructed Yusefzai to take first a taxi, then a bus from the Pakistani city of Quetta. Aboard the bus, a guide told him to get off and change buses. The second bus stopped suddenly in the middle of nowhere on a lonely rural road, about 45 miles from Quetta....

What is Poker? Poker is a card game that involves winning and losing money. In this definition itself lies the two main differences between chess and poker: chess is a board game and does not involve money as a part of the game. Benefits of Poker Though it may not seem like it, this mind game teaches the players to strategize, to think beyond your own moves and anticipate those of your opponents....

Ronaldo ended his nine-year stay at LaLiga giants Real Madrid in July 2018, moving to Italian champions Juve for €120million. The 34-year-old more than repaid his transfer fee, scoring 21 Serie A goals as Massimiliano Allegri’s Juventus cruised to an eighth successive Scudetto. Ronaldo also became the first player to reach 100 wins and 125 goals in the Champions League, though Juve were eliminated by Ajax in the quarter-finals – a defeat which ultimately may have been the reason for Allegri’s departure at the end of the campaign....

But artists are a surprisingly hardy lot–many of them still work in unheated lofts and live off almost nothing in sales–and by the end of the year spirits, if not livelihoods, had returned to normal. Or at least close enough so we can look back and appreciate the genuine highlights of 2001: Richard Serra (Gagosian Gallery, New York, Oct. 18-Dec. 15) What can you say about a show of “torqued ellipses” and other elemental forms, made from about a zillion pounds of rusting steel, that simply made you happy–no, overjoyed–just to be in the gallery?...

There were a few upsets, some close games and breakout performances, but not the usual wow factor we expect in the early rounds. Once the bracket hit the Elite Eight, the madness returned to March. All four games were close, two went to overtime and high-level basketball was played in each region. And then there were four. The Final Four is set for this weekend in Minneapolis and if the Elite Eight is any indication, college basketball fans are in for a real treat....

Any hope that the resolution of the dispute might soften Castro’s attitude toward Washington was quickly dashed. “Elian is back,” said Granma, the official organ of the Cuban Communist Party, “but the greater battle continues.” On state-run television, newscasters gloated at wire photos of Elian’s disconsolate relatives in Miami, and Ricardo Alarcon, president of the rubber-stamp National Assembly, publicly belittled a move by congressional Republicans to resume food sales to Cuba after 38 years....

Philippe Coutinho was brought in from Liverpool in the summer of 2018, and much was expected of him. Yet, the Brazilian was heavily deployed in the left-wing forward position, a role that had been his compatriot Neymar’s since 2013. Coutinho struggled to stake his claim in the Barcelona XI and was eventually loaned out to Bayern Munich. In recent years, Arthur Melo was brought in from Gremio. But the promising 23-year-old was shipped to Juventus after spending just two seasons in the Nou Camp in an absurd transfer move that may look good in terms of short term gains, but actually backfire in the long run for Barcelona....

A silver lining which appeared at the end of day 2 of the second test disappeared due to the Herculean efforts of Brendon McCullum. The mistakes committed in this tour should not be forgotten. Less than a year remains for the World Cup down under, and hence the Indian batsmen, bowlers and the selectors have very little time to mend their mistakes. In a tour that was filled with negatives, positives were hard to come by....

The Swedish YouTuber had been grinding out Minecraft on stream with the title, “playing until Marzia tells me to stop.” PewDiePie clearly had enough of streaming even before Marzia told him to get off the game. He looked visibly exhausted - with bags under his eyes - as he scratched his head in frustration. The 31-year-old then called out to Marzia, but she didn’t hear him the first time. She eventually called back from a different room and told him that his food was ready....

Not so Beijing. A Foreign Ministry spokesman downplayed Gao’s selection and accused the Nobel committee of using the award for “ulterior political motives.” That’s because the government has long considered the intellectual Gao a political dissident. He first came under scrutiny during the Cultural Revolution, when he spent six years being “re-educated” in a hard-labor camp and ended up burning reams of his writing. His work was finally published in China in 1979....

No words were needed, though, to hype the drama. For the first time in six weeks since the attack on Kerrigan at the U.S. national championships – the two stars of the greatest melodrama in the annals of American sport were on the same stage again. Proof of the magnitude of the confrontation was the presence of Chicago White Sox co-owner Eddie Einhorn, who could have stayed in far warmer climes and watched the world’s most celebrated athlete, Michael Jordan, try to make his baseball team....

If you use the wrong stand or a low-quality one, you can kiss your expensive microphone goodbye because it might tip over. This article offers a basic guide to mic stands, revealing the seven different types as well as which setups they’re best suited for. What Is a Microphone Stand? Microphone stands have existed for over 100 years. Nobody actually “invented” them since some of the first microphones had undetachable stands built into the mics themselves....

J. S. Fuerst of Chicago’s Loyola University School of Social Work studied the lives of 684 children who attended six special, publicly funded schools in Chicago between 1967 and 1977. Most had not only two years of preschool but also from two to seven additional years in an intensive elementary-school program that Fuerst describes as “Head Start to the fourth power.” The six child-parent centers set up in the city’s worst neighborhoods encouraged parents to help out at school and gave kids a heavy dose of academics, with an emphasis on language development....

In one randomized study, participants ate either a small, high-carb breakfast or a larger, high protein/high fat breakfast for three months that provided about 33% of total daily calories. The people who ate the high protein/high fat breakfast had greater reductions in hemoglobin A1C (a measure of blood glucose levels over three months) as well as in systolic blood pressure than those who ate high carb breakfasts What’s more, nearly all of the people with type 2 diabetes who were overweight who were in the big-breakfast group were able to reduce their reliance on medications....

In roughly seven days the bill will officially die in the Senate. The American people deserve to know why. After a decades-long decline in cases of child abuse and neglect, our nation has suffered a disturbing uptick in child maltreatment. This worrying trend prompted me and my colleagues in Congress to revisit the Child Abuse Prevention and Treatment Act, or CAPTA, which governs the federal effort to protect children from abuse and neglect....

The future of Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic has been subject to a lot of speculation, however. The announcement that several new Star Wars TV shows and games were in development earlier this year had many fans hoping that a KOTOR remake—or perhaps even a third game—might be on the way. Here’s a history of the Knights of the Old Republic rumors, why some are more reliable than others, and what it all might mean for the franchise over the next few years....

Yesterday we published our review of the latest Mortal Kombat title as well as continued with part 2 of our feature A History of Violence: A Look Back At The ‘Mortal Kombat’ Series for a look at Mortal Kombat 3 and Mortal Kombat Mythologies: Sub-Zero. Next up: Mortal Kombat 4 and Mortal Kombat: Special Forces. We’ll keep updating the stories with links to subsequent installments but, for now, here’s a guide to help you navigate to the other articles in the series....