As novel coronavirus spreads throughout the United States, millions of Americans are spending more time at home.MORE: Here's everything coming to Disney+ in AprilBut whether you're doing so because of a job loss, working from home situation or otherwise taking part in the mass effort to stay safe, chances are you've been bored once or twice while living under quarantine.Thankfully, some very talented people have been creating extra-special performances and experiences that you can enjoy to help you cope with the new normal and that don't break any social distancing rules. ...

For weeks after Ahmaud Arbery was killed while running down a road in coastal southern Georgia, there were few public developments in the case of a 25-year-old unarmed black man who was shot while being pursued by two white men with weapons in February.Then a graphic video of the shooting surfaced online, spurring widespread outrage.Within days, the Georgia Bureau of Investigation had taken over the case. The video was criticized by celebrities and politicians alike, including President Donald Trump, who called the footage "very, very disturbing," and former Vice President Joe Biden, the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee, who said Arbery had essentially been "lynched before our very eyes."And in a major turn, the authorities announced Thursday night that they had arrested two suspects in the case and charged them with murder and aggravated assault.The video -- which by Friday officials had described as "a very important piece" of evidence in moving forward with criminal charges -- was first posted by WGIG, a radio station in Brunswick, Georgia, which said it had obtained the footage from an anonymous source.But in a twist emblematic of the small-town politics that have defined the case, that source turned out to be a criminal defense lawyer in town who had informally consulted with the suspects.The lawyer, Alan Tucker, said in an interview Friday that the video had come from the cellphone of a man who had filmed the episode and that he later gave the footage to the radio station. Tucker's role was confirmed by Scott Ryfun, who oversees the station's programming.Asked why he had leaked the video, Tucker said he had wanted to dispel rumors that he said had fueled tension in the community. "It wasn't two men with a Confederate flag in the back of a truck going down the road and shooting a jogger in the back," Tucker said."It got the truth out there as to what you could see," he added. "My purpose was not to exonerate them or convict them."The video, taken from inside a vehicle, shows Arbery running when he comes upon a white truck, with one man standing next to its open driver's-side door and another in the bed of the pickup. Arbery runs around the truck and disappears briefly from view. Then the man standing outside the truck tussles with him, and three gunshots are heard.The authorities identified Travis McMichael, 34, as the person who shot Arbery. His father, Gregory McMichael, 64, a retired investigator at the local district attorney's office, was also charged.Before the charges were filed this week, two prosecutors had recused themselves from handling the case, citing professional ties to Gregory McMichael. Tucker, too, said he had been an acquaintance of McMichael's from their work in legal circles.Reports suggest Tucker had consulted with the McMichael family in some capacity during the investigation, although it is not clear to what extent. Reached by The Washington Post before his arrest Thursday, Gregory McMichael referred questions to Tucker.Tucker declined to comment on his conversations with the McMichaels on Friday, citing attorney-client privilege."I'm not going to tell you what I told them or what they told me," he said, using profanity to say that any conversations -- had they occurred, he said -- were none of the public's business.At times during the interview, a woman could be heard in the background whispering suggested answers to Tucker.By Friday afternoon, Tucker said that it had been decided that he would not be retained as the lawyer for either of the McMichaels, and it was unclear who was representing them.Tucker said he would not be representing anyone else involved in the case, as the authorities announced Friday that they were pursuing a number of leads, including investigating the man who took the video.The man, Roddie Bryan, lives in the neighborhood. He had shared the video with the police before sharing it with Tucker and was cooperating with the authorities, his lawyer, Kevin Gough, said in an interview Friday evening."Mr. Bryan has never tried to hide anything from anybody," Gough said. "If anybody wanted a copy of the video, he would give it to them."But he said the added attention, including the scrutiny from the authorities, had come as a shock to his client, a mechanic who had since lost his job and received threats. "The atmosphere down here is very volatile," Gough said. "People are in fear. That's all a result of the last few days."The latest developments in the case on Friday fell on Arbery's birthday, when he would have turned 26. Thousands of people commemorated the occasion by running 2.23 miles, a nod to Feb. 23, the date he was killed.This article originally appeared in The New York Times.(C) 2020 The New York Times Company

MP called for love to be added to list of permitted reasons for long-distance journeys

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Couples separated by France’s strict coronavirus rules will remain lovelorn after ministers ruled out a proposed change to the law extending the country’s state of health emergency.

The “lovers’ amendment”, as it was called, was proposed by an MP during a debate on the legislation in the lower house the national assembly.

Meanwhile police in London say they’re ‘losing the battle’ as people gather in parks despite coronavirus clockdown

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The coastguard has urged the public not to ignore the government’s stay-at-home message after recording its highest number of distress calls in a single day since the lockdown began.

The rescue service said it dealt with 97 incidents on Friday, more than half the daily average over the previous month.

She’s acted, modelled, worked with Kanye West and Drake. But the Black-ish star didn’t dare follow her mother, Diana Ross – until now

There is a strange noise coming from Tracee Ellis Ross’s Los Angeles garden. Hang on, she says, looking away from her computer screen to the window with an alarmed expression. “I’m just going to go check that out. Stand by!”

If this were a horror movie, then the stylish woman disappearing into the distance would never come back. But it isn’t a horror movie, it’s a Zoom interview, and Ross, a Golden Globe-winning actor best known for her role in the US sitcom Black-ish, is talking to me from the sunny living room of her home. Or at least she was; right now, I’m staring at a fiddle-leaf fig tree and a comfortable-looking couch.

Despite having made 130 more films – including six Tarantinos – Jackson trails king of the curse word Hill. But then he wasn’t in The Wolf of Wall Street …

With the movie industry shut down due to coronavirus, now is a valuable time for us to look back and properly examine the attraction that we have to certain figures. Are we drawn to Tom Hanks because he exudes a sense of benevolent paternalism that we tend to find subconsciously appealing? Do we flock to Marvel films because we seek the clarity of a good-v-evil dynamic in a world where those are becoming increasingly opaque?

And why do people go and see Jonah Hill films? Seriously, why?

Hollywood loves a good comeback, and post-coronavirus will be no exception, writes costume designer Kristin M Burke

Many events have killed the film industry: the 1918 influenza epidemic, the second world war, the invention of television, the invention of VCRs, the invention of the internet, 9-11, strike after strike after strike. And yet, like a phoenix, it rises, every time stronger than before. The appetite for its product is insatiable especially in times of political trouble and uncertainty about the future. People want to escape. They want to be entertained.

The way we make movies most certainly must change. In the best of circumstances, we are a crew of 75 people jammed into a room with very little ventilation, holding our breath until we hear “CUT”. We are in close contact with one another all day long. We never really thought about it before. All of that is about to change. Film sets usually function as big families, and moving forward, that family unit will take on a stronger, protective meaning. This is how we self-regulate in the post-pandemic era.

Alan Yang’s film about the lack of understanding between generations strikes a chord, and is so relevant as coronavirus racism spreads

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Inflamed by President Trump’s casual phrase “Chinese virus”, anti-Asian sentiment is erupting all over the world. As a British-Vietnamese person who has been spat on because of the colour of her skin, the film Tigertail is a glimmer of hope – a way of showing the truth, and connecting Asian communities at a time when panic and misinformation serve to break us apart. Alan Yang’s multi-generational love story Tigertail weaves in Yang’s cultural self-discovery and features memories of Taiwan, as experienced by the protagonist Pin-Jui. Weighted against the present tide of anti-Asian bigotry, this tender story about honesty and lost love is more relevant than ever.

“American culture has been negligent in portraying Asian-American people as fully realised human beings,” Yang told the Deadline podcast. Yang, who worked on Parks and Recreation before co-creating Master of None, recalled the trepidation he felt in the early days of his career, in a cultural landscape where east Asians were rarely represented, or stereotyped as hardworking automatons. Yang said he had felt restricted to using only white characters in his early pilots, fearing that all-Asian or Asian-American scripts would never be accepted. But this was before the film successes of Crazy Rich Asians, The Farewell and Parasite brought real Asian faces to mainstream culture.

With cinemas closed and major titles delaying their release, the Academy has changed its rules to welcome some streaming titles. Will they regret it?

‘What about the Oscars?” might not be the question at the top of your mind as you consider the manifold uncertainties raised by the coronavirus pandemic. A Hollywood awards ceremony scheduled for the end of February 2021, one might think, has fewer immediate concerns than most cultural institutions do right now. Yet panic has been rising within the Academy: the show itself may go on, but with cinemas closed for the foreseeable future and dozens of major titles either rescheduling or indefinitely delaying their release dates, will it have have enough standout films to celebrate?

For some weeks now, the joke around the industry has been that Leigh Whannell’s hit psychothriller The Invisible Man – one of the few popular and critical successes to be released in the year’s early months – may as well collect its gongs now. But a crucial rule change announced on Tuesday by Academy CEO Dawn Hudson and president David Rubin has ensured that it will face some competition after all, even if its rivals never see the inside of a cinema.

This uncanny story of preppy drug dealers has a touch of Heathers and a bit of Bret Easton Ellis, and an intriguing take on what high school is really like

Tayarisha Poe, like her partial namesake, has a gift for the uncanny. She is the photographer and film-maker behind this feature debut, which began as an online multimedia project and was developed as a conventional movie through the Sundance screenwriters and directors labs. What has emerged is an intriguing, opaque, tonally elusive story that seems weirdly unfinished. It is set in a privileged high school – a world of ivy-covered stone buildings and shady quadrangles where rich kids are separated into malign and mutually hostile cliques. It has a touch of Donna Tartt and Bret Easton Ellis, a hint of Heathers and a bit of the elegant, disdainful satire of Dear White People.

Somehow, though, it is odder, more stylised and contrived, always holding out the possibility that it is set in the future, or in an alternative present on some other planet, or inside the head of one of its characters who is having a disturbing dream – the kind that ends just as it is about to give up its meaning. Right until the closing credits, I half-expected the face of each person on screen to flip upwards, revealing a Stepford-like set of dials.

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

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

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

This heartwarming documentary traces the lives of a baseball star and her partner, now in their 90s, who pretended to be ‘just good friends’ for decades

This documentary from Netflix is a real heart-soother. Directed with tremendous sensitivity and intimacy by Chris Bolan, it’s a love story about two women now in their 90s – Terry Donahue and Pat Henschel, who have been together since the 1940s.

For decades they kept up the pretence of being “just good friends” to their families before finally coming out a few years ago. Talking to outsiders, they still describe each other as “cousins”. The legacy of shame and fear among older people in the gay community is explored in the film, but the overwhelming mood here is love.

The actor, best known for playing Gollum in the Lord of the Rings and Hobbit films, will read the entire JRR Tolkien novel

Andy Serkis is to give a continuous, live reading of The Hobbit – lasting around 12 hours – in aid of charity. The actor, best known as Gollum in the Lord of the Rings and Hobbit films, will read the entire book from start to finish with no breaks.

Money raised from the performance will be split equally between NHS Charities Together and Best Beginnings.

Elizabeth Sankey’s fine documentary on the genre, premiering on Mubi, could be the perfect spark for your own romantic comedy love-in

Romantic comedies are a perennially undervalued genre: even very fine ones are often described as “guilty pleasures”. That’s always a nonsense term, given that no pleasure is without value or grace – least of all these days. Under lockdown, don’t you find yourself more inclined towards romantic comedies both great and mediocre, to sink yourself in the familiar warmth of stories driven by love and tenderness, where everything tends to turn out fine?

Mubi has thus chosen an opportune moment to premiere Romantic Comedy, a spry, affectionate documentary by musician turned film-maker Elizabeth Sankey that gives this maligned genre its due. A short, accessible film essay that did the festival rounds last year, it cuts to the heart of why romcoms have to work harder to be taken seriously – hint: they tend to prioritise the female viewer – and unpicks their history of flawed gender politics and heteronormative bias. But it’s a loving exercise, overlaid with droll personal commentary, and one that will have you jotting down a playlist of films to watch right after.

Jodian Self is hanging out with some of the biggest names in pro sports these days — all from the comfort of her south Winnipeg home. The 52-year-old former physical education ...

You know who you are. You know what you did. And to the driver who killed Nathan Beaulieu’s dog in a cowardly hit-and-run, the Winnipeg Jets defenceman wants you to ...

Complacency is not a word in Kelsey Wog’s vocabulary. Every season, the fourth-year Bisons swimmer finds a way to take her game to the next level and break records along the ...

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

"ARK: Survival Evolved" Crystal Isles is coming to PC soon, alongside a huge anniversary event on all platforms. Get the full details here.

Out of 200 employees tested at a German meat processing plant, 151 tested positive Thursday for coronavirus, triggering an "emergency mechanism" to delay the easing of social distancing restrictions.

Bill Maher said Republicans "don't care" about Tara Reade's sexual assault allegations, saying such claims are simply used as a "unilateral weapon" against Democrats.

Trump administration whistleblower Rick Bright teared up while ripping the Trump's response to the coronavirus: "We could've done something and we didn't."

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

Some fans think the new album art was released in anticipation of a rumored platinum edition of Glory.

From yoga apps to an intelligent jumprope

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

This should be a big help at the grocery store

Tips and game suggestions for gaming first-timers and veterans alike

The newly-remastered images show the icy surface of Europa, the sixth of Jupiter’s moons and the fourth largest, in enhanced color. All three high-resolution images were captured along the same longitude of Europa as NASA’s Galileo spacecraft flew by on September 26, 1998, in the eighth of the spacecraft’s 11 targeted flybys of the icy [...]

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

A species of plant that grew about 400 million years ago (Early Devonian period) produced a spectrum of spore sizes, which is an essential innovation necessary for all advanced plant reproductive strategies, including seeds and flowers. The Devonian period is one of the most important time periods for the evolution of land plants. It witnessed [...]

While the present-day Martian surface is generally dry and cold, its sedimentary rocks contain compelling evidence for the former presence of liquid water. According to a new analysis of orbital images of 3.7-billion-year-old sedimentary layers at Izola mensa, an outcrop in the northwestern rim of the Hellas impact crater on Mars, deep rivers were active [...]

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

Neuroscientists at the Allen Institute for Brain Science have released the third version of their Allen Mouse Brain Common Coordinate Framework (CCFv3). A mouse brain contains approximately 100 million cells across hundreds of different regions. As neuroscience datasets grow larger and more complex, a common spatial map of the brain becomes more critical, as does [...]

Green tea supplementation is associated with a decrease in body weight and body mass index in obese patients, according to a new systematic review and meta-analysis of randomized controlled trials. “Green tea is one of the major types of tea (Camelia sinensis) and belongs to the non-fermented tea class,” said corresponding author Dr. Jing Wei [...]

Disruptor Beam, the mobile gaming startup behind Star Trek Timelines, has a new name and a new business. It’s now calling itself Beamable, and it’s selling a set of tools to help game developers add commerce and social functionality to their titles. The company’s direction became clear earlier this year when it sold Timelines to […]

Twitch is doubling down on esports in this new era of social distancing as a number of traditional sporting events have been cancelled. The company this week introduced a new esports directory on its site that will make it easier for viewers to find live matches, information on players, games with active competition leagues, a […]

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

AI algorithms for deep-reinforcement learning have demonstrated the ability to learn at very high levels in constrained domains.

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

2020 and 2021 will be one of the periodic transitional eras in gaming as Sony and Microsoft debut their shiny new consoles, the PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X. To ease the process (and spur adoption of the next generation), EA may make its upcoming titles free to “upgrade” to your chosen console. On an […]

The notoriously independent-minded federal judge who once said he was disgusted by the conduct of Michael Flynn could block the administration's bid to drop criminal charges against the former adviser to President Donald Trump, legal experts said.

The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) on Friday reported 1,248,040 cases of the new coronavirus, an increase of 28,974 cases from its previous count, and said that the number of deaths had risen by 2,180 to 75,477.