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Tag Archives: Hiatus
‘Chicago Fire’ Fans, Taylor Kinney Came Out of Hiatus to Pay Tribute to Treat Williams After His Death – Yahoo Life
- ‘Chicago Fire’ Fans, Taylor Kinney Came Out of Hiatus to Pay Tribute to Treat Williams After His Death Yahoo Life
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Revelers throng to New Year’s parties after COVID hiatus
MELBOURNE, Australia (AP) — Revelers in major city centers across Europe and the Middle East were ushering in 2023 with countdowns and fireworks, as many cities around the globe celebrated New Year’s Eve without restrictions for the first time since the start of the coronavirus pandemic.
Children crowded a metro station in Kharkiv, Ukraine, to meet with St. Nicholas and enjoy a special performance ahead of the new year. Meanwhile, some soldiers who said they usually celebrate the holiday with family decided to stay in the trenches as they sought to defend their country.
Others in Ukraine returned to the capital, Kyiv, to spend New Year’s Eve with their loved ones. As Russian attacks continue to target power supplies, leaving millions without electricity, no big celebrations were planned. A curfew was to be in place as the clock struck midnight.
French President Emmanuel Macron delivered “a message of unity and trust” in a televised address Saturday. Referencing the war in Ukraine several times, Macron also sent a message to France’s “Ukrainian friends,” saying “we respect and admire you.”
“During the coming year, we will be unfailingly at your side. We will help you until victory and we will be together to build a just and lasting peace. Count on France and count on Europe,” he said.
Turkey’s most populous city, Istanbul, was bringing in 2023 with street festivities and fireworks. At St. Antuan Catholic Church on Istanbul’s popular pedestrian thoroughfare Istiklal Avenue, dozens of Christians prayed for the new year and marked former Pope Benedict XVI’s passing. The Vatican announced Benedict died Saturday at age 95.
The Pacific nation of Kiribati was the first country to greet the new year, with the clock ticking into 2023 one hour ahead of neighbors including New Zealand.
In Auckland, large crowds gathered below the Sky Tower, where a 10-second countdown to midnight preceded fireworks. The celebrations in New Zealand’s largest city were well-received after COVID-19 forced them to be canceled a year ago.
There was a scare in the North Island coastal city of Tauranga, about 225 kilometers (140 miles) from Auckland, when a bouncing castle was blown 100 meters (yards). Tauranga City Council reported one person was hospitalized and four people were treated on site.
Over 1 million people crowded along Sydney’s waterfront for a multi-million dollar celebration based around the themes of diversity and inclusion. More than 7,000 fireworks were launched from the top of the Sydney Harbour Bridge and a further 2,000 from the nearby Opera House.
It was the “party Sydney deserves,” the city’s producer of major events and festivals Stephen Gilby told The Sydney Morning Herald.
“We have had a couple of fairly difficult years; we’re absolutely delighted this year to be able to welcome people back to the foreshores of Sydney Harbor for Sydney’s world-famous New Year’s Eve celebrations,” he said.
In Melbourne, Australia’s second largest city, a family-friendly fireworks display along the Yarra River as dusk fell preceded a second session at midnight.
Authorities in military-ruled Myanmar announced a suspension of its normal four-hour curfew in the country’s three biggest cities so residents could celebrate New Year’s Eve. However, opponents of army rule urged people to avoid public gatherings, fearing that security forces might stage a bombing or other attack and blame it on them.
Concerns about the Ukraine war and the economic shocks it has spawned across the globe were felt in Tokyo, where Shigeki Kawamura has seen better times but said he needed a free, hot meal this New Year’s.
“I hope the war will be over in Ukraine so prices will stabilize,” he said. “Nothing good has happened for the people since we’ve had Mr. Kishida,” he said, referring to Prime Minister Fumio Kishida.
He was one of several hundred people huddled in the cold in a line circling a Tokyo park to receive free New Year’s meals of sukiyaki, or slices of beef cooked in sweet sauce, with rice.
“I hope the new year will bring work and self-reliance,” said Takaharu Ishiwata, who lives in a group home and hasn’t found lucrative work in years.
Kenji Seino, who heads the meal program for the homeless Tenohasi, which means “bridge of hands,” said the number of people coming for meals was rising, with jobs becoming harder to find after the coronavirus pandemic hit, and prices going up.
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Associated Press journalists Henry Hou in Beijing, Renata Brito in Kyiv, Yuri Kagayema in Tokyo, Grant Peck in Bangkok, Zeynep Bilginsoy in Istanbul and Thomas Adamson in Paris contributed to this report.
E3 2023 to Return to L.A. After Three-Year Hiatus
It’s game back on for E3.
After a three-year absence, E3 — historically the game industry’s biggest confab — is scheduled to return to the Los Angeles Convention Center the second week of June 2023.
The Entertainment Software Association, the trade group that runs the convention, also announced a partnership to produce E3 2023 with ReedPop, the event-production company behind PAX, New York Comic Con, Star Wars Celebration and others.
After the convention in 2020 was canceled because of COVID, ESA held an all-virtual E3 2021 from June 12-15, 2021. This year’s convention was canceled altogether: After scrapping the in-person L.A. event over ongoing concerns about the spread of the coronavirus, ESA said it wouldn’t host a virtual show either in 2022 and would focus on “delivering a revitalized physical and digital E3 experience next summer.”
E3 2023 will welcome back publishers, developers, journalists, content creators, manufacturers, buyers, and licensors. In addition, the event will feature digital showcases and in-person consumer components. ESA, in announcing the return of E3 to L.A., hyped next year’s event as a “week of titanic AAA reveals, earth-shaking world premieres and exclusive access to the future of video games.”
“We are thrilled to bring back E3 as an in-person event with ReedPop, a global leader in producing pop culture events,” Stanley Pierre-Louis, president and CEO of the ESA, said in a statement. “The past three years have confirmed that E3 convenes our industry like no other event.”
ESA hasn’t announced specific dates for the E3 2023. Media registration will begin in late 2022. Confirmed exhibitors, hotel and travel guides, event schedules, and other details will be shared in the months to come, the organization said.
In 2019, the last time E3 was held in person, the convention drew 66,100 attendees, according to the ESA.
Some years ago, ReedPop had made a formal pitch to the ESA take over E3, Variety previously reported, but that never came to pass.
Kanye West emerges from ‘hiatus’ with surprise, Kardashian-referencing speech at BET Awards
The 2022 BET Awards, which took place Sunday at Los Angeles’s Microsoft Theater, was full of surprises, from Janelle Monáe’s live, presumably unscripted F-bomb drop to a jarring In Memoriam segment that mentioned the “death” of Roe v. Wade. But one of the three-hour ceremony’s most unexpected moments, near the end of the evening, was Kanye West’s return to the spotlight.
West has kept a low profile since April. That month, he pulled out of the Coachella festival with no explanation and with less than two weeks’ notice, and he was also reportedly barred from performing at the Grammy Awards due to his disturbing social media attacks on his ex-wife Kim Kardashian’s new boyfriend, Saturday Night Live star Pete Davidson. But the controversial hip-hop star was apparently still welcome at the BET Awards, where he showed up to pay tribute to his “brother,” Lifetime Achievement honoree Sean “Diddy” Combs. While West’s entire face was obscured by a black stocking mask, mirrored shades, and a pulled-low baseball cap, there was no mistaking his identity — especially when he delivered one of his typically lengthy, colorful speeches.
In his speech, West explained that he came out of hiding Sunday specifically because he could not pass up the opportunity to honor his longtime friend and role model. “I took a little hiatus. I said, ‘I just want to declare myself legally dead for a year. Nobody missing me. I just want to be off the grid,’” he confessed, before adding that “Puff [Daddy] is pretty persistent. … If Puff ever need us, we need to jump and be there. This man has been through and survived a lot of stuff, broke down a lot of doors so we could be standing — I know for me, that I could be here today.”
West’s speech for Diddy, which followed an epic all-star performance featuring Mary J. Blige, Nas, Lil’ Kim, Busta Rhymes, Faith Evans, Jodeci, the Lox, Bryson Tiller, the Maverick City Choir, and Diddy himself, included many surprisingly sweet and sincere moments. At one point, West emotionally thanked Combs, his “favorite artist,” for inspiring him, gushing: “Back then there was so many rules to hip-hop, and he broke all of them. … He broke down so many doors about classism, taste, culture, swag. Puff, if I never told you, I love you.”
However, the line in Ye’s speech that of course got the most attention and traction on Twitter was a cheeky mention of his ex, Kardashian, from whom he separated in February 2021. “I go to [Combs] for advice to this day. He inspires so many of my choices, so many of my life choices. My wife choices,” West quipped. “And, here we are. Thanks for that, Puff.”
The 2022 BET Awards took place Sunday, June 26 at the Microsoft Theater in downtown Los Angeles. For a full list of winners, click here.
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CERN’s particle accelerator starts up after a three-year hiatus
Two beams of protons zipped around the Large Hadron Collider on Friday, marking the return of the world’s largest particle accelerator after over three years on hiatus. The European Organisation for Nuclear Research, or CERN, spent the past three years doing maintenance work and making major upgrades to the system. Now, the group is preparing to start on a four-year stretch of data collection scientists hope will reveal new secrets of the universe.
“It is going to be two to three times better, in terms of the ability for our experiment to detect, collect and analyze data,” Marcella Bona, a particle physicist from Queen Mary University of London, told BBC.
This summer will mark the start of the third run of the LHC, referred to as Run 3. The upgrades over the past few years mean that this run will see higher numbers of particle collisions, and that those particles will collide with greater energy than anything seen in previous runs. Scientists will use the new capabilities to test the limits of the Standard Model of physics, a theory that explains how particles interact on a subatomic level. Along with other experiments, they will try and find new kinds of particles, and maybe even get a clearer picture of dark matter, a still-undiscovered substance that scientists believe accounts for a large percentage of the universe. But its existence still hasn’t been proven.
New projects will also scrutinize the Higgs boson, a particle discovered through experiments at the LHC in a landmark finding ten years ago, in more detail.
“It’s a really exciting time,” Bona told BBC. “We’ve worked for the past three years updating the machinery. Now we are ready.”
The Large Hadron Collider is about to turn back on after a 3-year hiatus
The world’s largest and most powerful particle accelerator is about to turn back on.
In December of 2018, the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) at CERN near Geneva, Switzerland, shut down so that improvements and updates could be made to the facility. After the more than three-year planned hiatus, the LHC is ready to turn back on for Run 3, its third round of operation.
CERN expects the particle accelerator to restart sometime between April 22 and April 24, a CERN representative told Space.com in an email. Run 3 will follow the successful Run 1 (2009-2013) and Run 2 (2015-2018).
Related: The Large Hadron Collider will explore the cutting edge of physics after 3-year shutdown
Although the shutdown was planned, the LHC did also run into some delays due to the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic. Nevertheless, the teams at CERN were able to make a number of updates and improvements to the particle accelerator to support new, next-generation science during the scheduled shutdown.
The LHC functions by accelerating particles like protons to nearly the speed of light, at which speeds the particles collide with one another. As the most powerful accelerator in the world, the LHC can generate hundreds of millions of particle collisions every second.
At the extreme high energies the LHC can create, scientists are able to explore mysterious phenomena like dark matter and dark energy, both of which scientists predict exist but neither of which have been proven or detected yet.
While only a small fraction of these ultra-high-speed collisions display the strange physics processes scientists are looking to study, the collisions can produce massive particles like the Higgs boson, an elementary particle predicted to exist by the Standard Model of particle physics that was verified by experiments at CERN in 2012.
Although the LHC has led to new physics research throughout both of its previous, successful runs, teams at CERN hope to push their explorations with the new upgrades implemented during the shutdown.
Included in these improvements, CERN has increased the power of the LHC’s injectors, which feed the beams of accelerated particles into the collider. During Run 2, ending in 2018, the collider could accelerate beams of particles up to an energy of 6.5 teraelectronvolts, which has been increased to 6.8 teraelectronvolts, according to a statement from CERN. (A single teraelectronvolt is roughly equal to 1 trillion electron volts (TeV). 1 TeV is roughly equivalent to the kinetic energy of a flying mosquito; this might not seem much, but it’s an immense amount of energy for a single proton.)
In order to pull off this significant increase in energy, thousands of superconducting magnets in the LHC, that direct the proton beams, need to “learn” to adjust to stronger currents after being shut of for so long during LS2 [Long Shutdown 2], CERN officials wrote in a statement. It takes about 12,000 individual tests as part of what CERN calls “magnet training” to make this adjustment.
The increase in energy will allow the LHC to pull off even higher energy collisions than before, potentially revealing new insights into how particles behave. In turn, scientists hope to push the Standard Model, the leading scientific theory that describes all known forces and particles in the universe, to better explain puzzles like dark matter and dark energy.
Run 3 will last until 2024, at which point another planned shutdown will occur. During this hiatus, another upgrade will narrow the colliders’ proton beams, increasing the number of simultaneous collisions taking place from 40 in 2018 to between 120 and 250, according to a report from NewScientist.
These upgrades will, altogether, be so significant that the LHC will be given a new name, becoming the “High Luminosity Large Hadron Collider” when it resumes work in 2028.
Email Chelsea Gohd at cgohd@space.com or follow her on Twitter @chelsea_gohd. Follow us on Twitter @Spacedotcom and on Facebook.
‘Saturday Night Live’ returns from hiatus with a powerful tribute to Ukraine
The tribute follows Russia launching an unprecedented military assault on the country earlier this week. The invasion has caused bloodshed, forced more than 120,000 people to flee the country and has been condemned by many nations around the world.
Cast members Kate McKinnon and Cecily Strong stood center stage at Studio 8H and introduced viewers to the Ukrainian Chorus Dumka of New York.
The choir then sang “Prayer for Ukraine” as the live audience sat silently.
McKinnon and Strong then returned to the stage and said the show’s signature catch phrase, “Live… From New York. It’s Saturday night.”
But instead of immediately cutting to the show’s opening credits, the camera panned to candles that were sitting in front of McKinnon and Strong on a table.
The candles were positioned to spell out “Kyiv,” the Ukrainian capital.
Iran nuclear talks to resume with world powers after five-month hiatus | Iran nuclear deal
Talks between world powers and Iran on salvaging the 2015 nuclear deal will resume in Vienna on Monday after a five-month hiatus, but expectations of a breakthrough are low.
The talks could liberate Iran from hundreds of western economic sanctions or lead to a tightening of the economic noose and the intensified threat of military attacks by Israel.
The scale of Iran’s negotiating demands, ideological outlook of Iran’s new administration and western fears that Iran is covertly boosting its nuclear programme has created a sense of pessimism.
Joe Biden has offered to take the US back into the nuclear deal that Donald Trump left in 2018, but Iran and the US are in dispute over the precise US sanctions that must be lifted, and how Iran would reverse the multiple steps it has taken to build its nuclear programme in breach of the deal.
After a round of bilateral talks on Sunday, the formal talks will take place at the Coburg hotel between Iran, Russia, China, the UK, France, Germany and the EU on Monday afternoon. Iran has again said it will not hold talk direct talks with the US delegation.
Russia’s ambassador to the talks said the near 30-strong Iranian negotiating team was impressive and a good sign, but warned after the five-month delay that: “The talks can’t last for ever. There is the obvious need to speed up the process”. The bulk of the Iranian negotiating team remains unchanged even though the chief negotiator is now Ali Bagheri Kani, the deputy foreign minister and a hardliner that understands English, but not well enough to speak fluently.
The new Iranian regime says, at least rhetorically, it is coming to the talks not simply to pick up where the six previous rounds of talks ended, but to play new cards: including a demand for financial compensation from America for previous sanctions, and, even more problematic, for a guarantee that America will not leave the agreement again. The west regards both demands as unrealistic, and if seriously pursued in Vienna, the talks are doomed to failure. Biden has said if he rejoins the agreement his administration will not again leave, seen as the only guarantee he can make constitutionally.
Western diplomats admit they are unclear whether the new regime wants a deal or is playing for time covertly to strengthen its nuclear programme. Robert Malley, the head of the US negotiating team, said: “If that’s Iran’s approach, which is to try to use the negotiations as cover for an accelerated nuclear programme, and as I say, drag its feet at the nuclear table, we will have to respond in a way that is not our preference. Nobody should be surprised if at that point there is increased pressure on Iran”.
UK diplomats are reluctant to say Iran is now as little as four to six weeks away from the “breakout time” it needs to amass enough fissile material for a single nuclear weapon. The west is unclear partly because UN nuclear inspectors from the IAEA have been denied full access to the disputed nuclear sites, and talks last week to restore access broke down. Raphael Grossi, the International Atomic Energy Agency’s (IAEA) director general, again offered on Friday to return to Tehran, but has received no response. Iran is still many years from being able to weaponise its nuclear material, a goal it insists it is not seeking.
Should the Vienna talks collapse, the likelihood is the US and its allies will initially confront Iran at the IAEA next month by calling for an emergency meeting. Israel’s prime minister, Naftali Bennett, is building a coalition to take tough measures against Iran if the talks collapse.
Diplomats doubt Iran feels under sufficient economic or political pressure to rejoin the scheme but also point to the growing fortnight long protests over water shortages in Isfahan as a sign that internally Iran more fragile than it appears.
Lifting economic sanctions remains a popular objective inside Iran, but the current regime have done little to prepare the nation politically for the compromises that might be necessary. Omer Carmi, former visiting fellow at the Washington Institute, warns Iranian politicians are “implying to domestic audiences that Iran need not lift a finger at the negotiating table to secure sanctions relief”.
Ground covered but not resolved in the talks include the extent of sanctions relief, how to verify that sanctions have been lifted and how Iran expects European nations to respond if the US was to leave the agreement again.
Iran has long emphasised that it expects Washington to remove all sanctions that are “related to the nuclear deal”, including 1,500 individual sanctions.
In dispute are Trump-era sanctions from more than 500 individuals seen by the US as linked to human rights abuses or terrorism, including the 2017 Countering America’s Adversaries Through Sanctions Act (CAATSA).
On verification Tehran will be asked if it would allow an impartial body to supervise sanctions have been lifted, and what benchmarks would be required such as the country’s ability to buy/sell oil and transfer its foreign currency reserves.
Bagheri said he would also want European governments to guarantee they will trade with Iran and allow Russia and China to join any special trading vehicle.
Costumes galore as New York Comic Con returns to Manhattan after a COVID-induced hiatus
New Yorkers may have noticed a few more costumed characters than usual as the New York Comic Con returned to Manhattan this weekend.
The event’s organizers announced the cancellation of their four-day in-person annual event in 2020, due to the coronavirus pandemic.
In its place, a virtual event called ‘New York Comic Con X MCM Comic Con Metaverse’ was on those dates.
The convention returned in 2021 with a requirement that all attendees ages 12 and up to provide proof of full vaccination in order to enter.
Many of the convention-goers were masked both to protect from COVID-19 and because that’s what was required of their colorful costumes, as they cosplayed as various characters throughout film, TV, movies and graphic novels.
New Yorkers may have noticed a few more costumed characters than usual as the New York Comic Con returned to Manhattan this weekend, including this Harley Quinn
The convention returned in 2021 with a requirement that all attendees ages 12 and up to provide proof of full vaccination in order to enter
This female Deadpool showed off how people often take liberties with cosplay, adding features to beloved characters to create a costume that’s like new
Many of the convention-goers were masked both to protect from COVID-19 and because that’s what was required of their colorful costumes, as they cosplayed as various characters throughout film, TV, movies and graphic novels, like these Spidermen (and Spiderwoman)
People got into the spirit of a newly relevant costume, dressing like characters from Netflix’s Squid Game
The convention has drawn as many as 180,000 people over a weekend to New York’s Jacob Javits Center
Celebrities who both create and portray those beloved characters are always a big part of conventions, and the 2021 New York Comic Con is no exception.
Autograph seekers could pay as much as $100 to get signatures from or photos with the likes of William Shatner, Hayden Christensen, David Harbour, John Cena, George Takei, Chace Crawford, Anthony Starr, Jurnee Smollet, Edward James Olmos, Erin Moriarty, Jack Quaid, Kel Mitchell, Daryl ‘DMC’ McDaniels, Jim Ross and Jerry ‘The King’ Lawler.
There were also several panel sessions, including a 40th anniversary retrospective of MTV, a virtual Q&A with the cast of the upcoming reboot of I Know What You Did Last Summer and a panel with the main cast of Amazon’s The Boys.
Amazon’s hit series The Boys had one of the larger panels Friday, as cast members looked back on the show’s first two seasons
The series, which debuted on the streamer in 2019, combines action and comedy and satirizes the larger comic book universes popular in modern movies
Former Gossip Girl star Chace Crawford plays aquatic superhero The Deep on The Boys, which recently wrapped production on its third season
There were also planned meetups available for various fandoms. The Comic Con encouraged hour long sessions for devotees of the likes of Harry Potter, Pokemon, Star Wars, Twilight and Doctor Who.
The convention also features several events centered around the business and hobbying of cosplay.
Attendees can find out how they can do charity work or occasionally volunteer as cosplayers. They can even learn how to turn it into a business at the ‘Business of Cosplay: Professional Development’ session.
The convention not only holds panels for cosplayers but encourages those who dress up from similar fandoms to hold meetup events
Convention-goers often dress up in a different costume for all four days of the convention
Some come dressed as the real thing, like this person showing off as Sonic the Hedgehog, which is awaiting a sequel to the legendary video game character’s hit film
A man dressed as Obi Wan Kenobi from Star Wars stops this costumed creature in its tracks
Diversity and inclusion in cosplay were also hot topics at various sessions, including ones that focused on how to incorporate body positivity and disabled access into costumes, or one session that was themed around cosplay and drag.
There are also several events centered around video games, podcasts, Broadway and even wrestling, as several AEW performers are in attendance.
The convention runs through Sunday at Manhattan’s Jacob Javits Convention Center.
This woman shows off as Storm, the X-Men character most famously portrayed on film by Halle Berry
Several characters came dressed as Harley Quinn, who has featured in three different films in recent years
The costumes ranged from homemade to professional and extremely elaborate
Part of the joy of cosplaying at conventions is the combination of characters from various universes posing for photos, like this one of the Incredible Hulk