A new research study, investigating how service robots in hotels could help redefine leadership and boost the hospitality industry, has taken on new significance in the light of the seismic impact of the Covid-19 outbreak on tourism and hospitality.

Parents should not feel pressured to make their young children undertake structured learning or achieve specific tasks, particularly during lockdown. A new study of children under the age of two has found that parents who take a more flexible approach to their child's learning can - for children who were easy babies - minimize behavioral problems during toddlerhood.

Environmental biologists have warned that the potential spread of COVID-19 via sewage 'must not be neglected' in the battle to protect human health.

Scientists set out to investigate a potential role of the gut microbiota in the development of cardio-metabolic diseases. They ended up identifying the common cholesterol-lowering drug statins as a potential microbiota-modulating therapeutic.

Marisa Bardach Ramel is co-author of “The Goodbye Diaries: A Mother-Daughter Memoir,” written with her mother Sally Bardach. As Mother’s Day approaches, I long to sit beside you, pour you some tea and talk about all the things.

Gregory McMichael and his son, Travis, were both charged with murder and aggravated assault.

BRUNSWICK, Ga. -- When the Glynn County Police Department arrived at the scene of a fatal shooting in February in southeastern Georgia, officers encountered a former colleague with the victim's blood on his hands.They took down his version of events and let him and his adult son, who had fired the shots, go home.Later that day, Wanda Cooper, the mother of the 25-year-old victim, Ahmaud Arbery, received a call from a police investigator. She recounted later that the investigator said her son had been involved in a burglary and was killed by "the homeowner," an inaccurate version of what had happened.More than two months after that fatal confrontation, the Georgia Bureau of Investigation, which took over the case this week, arrested the former officer, Gregory McMichael, and his son, Travis McMichael, on charges of murder and aggravated assault.The charges -- which came after the release of a graphic video showing the killing as the two white men confront Arbery, who was African American -- made clear the depths of the local department's bungling of the case, which was just the latest in a series of troubling episodes involving its officers.And it was one element of the broader potential breakdown of the justice system in South Georgia. Attorney General Chris Carr, through a spokeswoman, said Friday that he planned to start a review of all of the relevant players in that system.Carr's office has already determined that George E. Barnhill, a district attorney who was assigned the case in February but recused himself late last month, should have never taken it on. Among his many conflicts: His son once worked alongside one of the suspects at the local prosecutor's office.S. Lee Merritt, a lawyer representing Arbery's family, has called for a federal civil rights investigation focused not only on the men who pursued Arbery but also the broader justice system."It's small-town America," Merritt said in an interview Thursday. "Those counties, the law enforcement community there, they know each other well; they recycle officers in between themselves -- it's a very tight-knit community."Over the years, Glynn County police officers have been accused of covering up allegations of misconduct, tampering with a crime scene, interfering in an investigation of a police shooting and retaliating against fellow officers who cooperated with outside investigators.The police chief was indicted days after Arbery's killing on charges related to an alleged cover-up of an officer's sexual relationship with an informant. The chief, John Powell, had been hired to clean up the department, which the Glynn County manager described last fall as suffering from poor training, outdated policies and "a culture of cronyism."The Glynn County force was the sort of department where disciplinary records went missing and where evidence room standards were not maintained, leading the state to strip it of its accreditation.Arbery was killed after the McMichaels confronted him while he was running in the Satilla Shores neighborhood just outside of Brunswick, the Glynn County seat. But neither of the McMichaels was arrested immediately after the slaying, which occurred Feb. 23 about 1 p.m.According to a police report, Gregory McMichael said that he saw Arbery running through his neighborhood and thought that he looked like the suspect in a rash of recent break-ins. McMichael, 64, told authorities that he and his son, Travis McMichael, 34, armed themselves and began chasing him in a truck.Gregory McMichael had been a Glynn County police officer from 1982 to 1989 and later worked as an investigator in the local prosecutor's office, before retiring last year.Darren W. Penn, a lawyer and a department critic, said the Ahmaud Arbery case was "another symptom or sign of a police department that appears willing to protect those that they know."Penn is representing a woman who is suing the department over claims that it failed to intervene with her estranged son-in-law, a Glynn County officer, who killed her daughter, a friend and himself in 2018.County officials and a police spokesman could not be reached Friday for comment.From the start, McMichael's connections to the police department and the prosecutor's office presented other challenges.The first district attorney assigned to the case, Jackie Johnson, recused herself because she had worked with McMichael. The second prosecutor, Barnhill, advised Glynn County police that there was "insufficient probable cause" to issue arrest warrants, according to an internal document.Finally, the case moved to Tom Durden, the district attorney in Georgia's Atlantic Judicial Circuit in Hinesville, who this week formally asked the state bureau of investigation to get involved, according to a GBI statement. A Justice Department spokesperson said this week that the FBI was assisting in the investigation.Bob Coleman, a county commissioner at large, was critical of Johnson, saying she should have given the case to the state attorney general, not Barnhill. After the Georgia Bureau of Investigation made arrests this week, Coleman said, "That's what should have happened a long time ago before the sun went down. They killed a person in the bright sunlight."Glynn County is a marshy coastal corner of Georgia about 300 miles southeast of Atlanta with about 85,000 residents, and is known mostly for its mellow barrier islands and its rich African American coastal culture.Like many Southern communities, its history is studded with racial violence, including three late 19th-century lynchings. Today, the county is about 70% white and 27% black, according to census figures.On Friday, hundreds gathered under the moss-draped trees outside the Glynn County courthouse to protest, arguing that the handling of the case had been botched as months went by without charges."I will never call the Glynn County police to my house!" one of Arbery's aunts said.Mario Baggs, a lifelong resident of Brunswick, said he believed that race was a factor in Arbery's killing, given the unfair treatment black men have long received."The black man is an endangered species," Baggs, 46, said. "We need justice; we need relief; we need the world to pay attention."Yet he also believed that Arbery's case fit into a larger pattern of dysfunction.Over the last decade, the Glynn County Police Department, which has 122 officers, has faced at least 17 lawsuits, including allegations of illegal search and seizure.One suit accused the department of wrongfully killing an unarmed white woman after officers fired through her car windshield. An investigation into that shooting found that Glynn County officers had tried to interfere with the inquiry to protect the officers involved.One of the officers in that shooting later killed his estranged wife and a friend. The wife's mother accused police of ignoring several alarming encounters in the months before the killings.Powell, the police chief, was arrested this year along with three other department officials after an investigation into a disbanded narcotics task force. The inquiry found that Powell had actively tried to shield wrongdoing by the task force. That led to his indictment on charges including violating the oath of office, criminal attempt to commit a felony and influencing a witness.As details of Arbery's death slowly emerged and were reported in The Brunswick News, Arbery's mother, increasingly distraught, called the department. She said that she had been told one thing but that the newspaper had reported something else entirely.Cooper's faith was shaken. "It's hard when you can't really believe what authority tells you, you know?" she said. "When you just cannot believe the people that's supposed to look out for all people. And when you question that, it's not a good feeling."Attempts to reach Gregory McMichael late last month were unsuccessful. In a brief phone conversation late last month, Travis McMichael, who runs a company that gives custom boat tours, declined to comment, citing the continuing investigation.The two men made a brief appearance in Glynn County Magistrate Court on Friday afternoon, but court officials said they did not enter a plea. No information about their lawyers was immediately available.Questions about the handling of Arbery's case extend beyond the police department and to Barnhill, the prosecutor who told police that there was insufficient probable cause to arrest the McMichaels.In an email Barnhill wrote to the state attorney general's office April 7, he asked to be taken off the case, stating that his son, an assistant district attorney in the Brunswick prosecutor's office, had handled a felony probation revocation case involving Arbery. He also said Gregory McMichael had helped with "a previous prosecution of Arbery."Court records show that Arbery was convicted of shoplifting and of violating probation in 2018; according to local news reports, he was indicted five years earlier for taking a handgun to a basketball game.Barnhill's office most recently drew attention beyond south Georgia for its prosecution of a black woman in rural Coffee County who had helped a first-time voter use a voting machine in the 2012 election. In 2018, a jury found the woman not guilty of multiple felonies. Her lawyers called the case "a racially motivated targeted prosecution."J. Peter Murphy, a Glynn County commissioner, on Friday defended the Police Department's decision to make no arrests in the shooting of Arbery. Murphy said the agency had been advised not to make arrests by both Barnhill and officials at the office of Johnson, the district attorney in Brunswick who formally asked to be taken off the case four days after the shooting. Neither prosecutor could be reached for comment."Tell me what the agency did wrong when its men and women were told several times not to arrest anyone?" Murphy said, referring to police. "What were they supposed to do? Cuff these guys and walk them into the jail and have no one prosecute them?"This article originally appeared in The New York Times.(C) 2020 The New York Times Company

Desmond Mombeyarara, 34, was with his son when officers shot him with a stun gun

Anti-racism protesters have gathered outside a petrol station in Greater Manchester to demonstrate against the stun gun shooting by police of a black man in the company of his distressed son.

Desmond Mombeyarara, 34, was shot with a stun gun by police on Wednesday evening after officers stopped him for allegedly speeding.

The star of M*A*S*H, The Long Goodbye – and more recently, Friends – talks about drugs, his fiery marriage to Barbra Streisand and getting his best reviews from Groucho Marx and Muhammad Ali

The best review ever received by Elliott Gould – renowned actor and star of M*A*S*H and The Long Goodbye; not to mention, Ross and Monica’s dad on Friends – was from Groucho Marx. The two of them had become close in the comedian’s latter years – so close, Gould says, “he used to let me shave him”. One day Marx asked Gould to change a lightbulb in his bedroom. Gould took off his shoes, stood on the bed and replaced the broken bulb. Marx told him: “That was the best acting I’ve ever seen you do.”

Gould, now 81, has been telling the story for decades – but it is clear even in our pixelated video call that it still delights him. “Isn’t that great?” he says, his distinctive nasal, New York baritone now deepened with age. As we speak he is sitting at a computer at a friend’s house in Los Angeles, relaxed in a blue hoodie, with a seemingly bottomless mug of coffee before him. In isolation on either side of the Atlantic, neither of us has anywhere to be. And after more than half a century in Hollywood, in which he went from leading man to exile and, eventually, fixture – Gould could fill days, not just hours, with his stories. Even without his eight-year marriage to Barbra Streisand.

Staff of the magazine that kicked off the French New Wave say its new elite owners pose a threat to editorial independence

The mass resignation of the staff of Cahiers du Cinéma, the film journal that launched the French New Wave, has reignited debate in France about the possibility of critical independence in a society whose major stakeholders frequently operate in several spheres.

On Thursday, the 15 staff writers and editors announced their resignation, saying they believed its new owners posed a threat to the magazine’s cherished independence.

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

• Read all the Lockdown watch films here
• The best arts and entertainment during self-isolation

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.

In the wake of Covid-19, We Are One: A Global Film Festival is taking the experience online. But cinema is a bigger encounter

Every year, at Cannes (and other festivals) there’s a plaintive argument about what Cannes (or other festivals) are really all “about”. Some Savonarola-type person will dash the glass of rosé out of your hand, throw your canape into the Med and tell you Cannes is not about red-carpet narcissism, not about stars preening in the flashbulb glare of celeb-worship, not about L’Oréal sponsorship, not about getting drunk at a million late-night parties. It’s about the movies, about cinema itself.

Of course. And that’s what the new Covid-19-related We Are One: A Global Film Festival appears to offer: the 10-day online festival, beginning 29 May, curated by Jane Rosenthal of the Tribeca film festival, featuring arthouse films (though not the big-ticket Hollywood items) from Cannes, Venice, Berlin and many more, streaming for free in return for an optional donation to the World Health Organization’s Covid-19 fund. So there you have it. A festival with all the frills and extras and flummeries stripped away. Just you, in your bedroom, with your laptop, communing with cinema. Isn’t that what it’s all about?

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.

The Oscar-winning sword-and-sandals Russell Crowe vehicle refreshed old cliches, before ushering in a spate of copycats

“Joey, do you like movies about gladiators?” the creepy pilot asks the small boy in Airplane!. To younger audiences, the joke no longer makes any sense. In Airplane!’s day, sword-and-sandals movies had become an outdated, unwittingly homoerotic joke. But then came Gladiator, and the joke was on us. Released 20 years ago this month, Ridley Scott’s Roman epic gave the old cliches a new lease of life. It was all here: Colosseum action! Rippling man-flesh! Tigers! But Gladiator had its cheesecake and ate it. It served up crowd-pleasing spectacle and airline-ad visuals but also solemn, Oscar-worthy drama (and, in retrospect, a fair degree of camp).

Related: The Guide: Staying In – sign up for our home entertainment tips

Water utility workers in El Paso, Texas were forced to unclog pumps over 20 times in 24 hours after residents refused to heed their call to refrain from flushing personal protective equipment and other coronavirus-related items down the toilet.

The winners and results of last night's Mega Millions lottery, plus how to avoid falling victim to a lottery scam.

Audio of a private conversation shows the 44th president's unvarnished views about the former national security adviser's case and the White House's COVID-19 response.

In fact, why not join them?

Video games can fill the productivity and social void in this unusual time

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 [...]

An analysis and structural modeling of the SARS-CoV-2 spike protein, the area of the virus that facilitates entry into a cell, reveals a unique feature that could explain why the COVID-19-causing coronavirus is so transmissible between people. The study also shows that, aside from primates, cats, ferrets and minks are the animal species apparently most [...]

A team of researchers from the University of Exeter has studied potential drivers of ‘rock juggling’ in two species of otters in zoo environments. Although elusive in the wild, otters are noted to be very playful and inquisitive animals based on observations in captivity. The animals are often seen lying on their backs and batting [...]

An analysis of the fossilized teeth of Deinonychus antirrhopus, a species of wolf-sized dromaeosaurid dinosaur that lived between 115 and 108 million years ago (Cretaceous period) in what is now the United States, adds to the growing evidence that this and other raptors were not complex social hunters by modern mammalian standards. The image of [...]

Epic Games is finally settling its feud — kind of — with Google and putting Fortnite onto the Google Play Store, but the studio sounds pretty pissed about it. When Fortnite launched on mobile in 2018, Epic Games very notably sidestepped the Google Play Store and pushed users to download the title directly from their […]

The idea of an in-game Travis Scott concert might seem a little silly — particularly if, like me, you’re not really a Fortnite player. Yes, the popular multiplayer game has hosted other promotional events for movies and music. But even if all this COVID-19 imposed isolation has left you hungry for live performances, why not […]

A couple of weeks ago, we noted some new NPD numbers pointing to a very good March for the Switch. Nintendo’s financials this week bear out the predicted surge in popularity for the three-year-old console. The company has sold 21 million Switch units in the past year, handily beating a 19.5 million forecast; 6.2 million […]

A federal judge on Friday declined to dismiss the charges against "Full House" actress Lori Loughlin and other wealthy parents awaiting trial in the U.S. college admissions scandal after they accused investigators of fabricating evidence.

U.S. President Donald Trump has not been in contact recently with a member of Vice President Mike Pence's staff who was found to be infected with the coronavirus, a senior administration official said on Friday.

Hundreds of protesters gathered in front of a Georgia courthouse on Friday to decry the killing of an unarmed black man in February and the delay in charging two white men in a shooting captured on video that was released earlier this week.

A dialogue on sex, consent, ownership over bodies must be introduced from a young age so that it becomes part of a dominant narrative, say experts.

Locals staged a protest at the chemical plant in R R Venkatapuram in Vizag demanding relocation of the factory.

Visakhapatnam, May 09: Days after styrene gas leak from the LG Polymers Private Limited in Vizag that claimed 11 lives and caused 800 others to be hospitalised, locals staged a protest at the factory. Protesters demand the relocation of the chemical

The presence of bacteria that break down fibre in a mother’s gut is linked to a reduced risk of food allergies in her child’s first year of life

People with covid-19 appear to be most contagious 15 hours before their symptoms start, and many people may not even go on to develop noticeable symptoms

A device that carries hot water down a tube into the gut may help manage diabetes by killing overgrown gut cells that release hormones key to metabolising food

Does a cell surface protein explain why the coronavirus is more likely to kill people with diabetes or heart disease? Researchers are trying to find out

Taking deep breaths and forcing a cough can help clear mucus, but these techniques are unlikely to prevent or treat coronavirus infections – here’s why

From social isolation to working on the front line, the mental health challenges of the pandemic are wide reaching. We ask experts how to protect ourselves

Getting less sleep for five nights in a row can make you view other people’s expressions more negatively, including facial reactions seen over video calls

A long-standing hypothesis suggests the BCG vaccine also serves to generally enhance the immune system, meaning it could protect against covid-19, and trials are under way to find out

It can be difficult for doctors to assess the level of consciousness in people who have had serious brain injuries, but observing their reaction to strong odours may help

To figure out what makes some people more vulnerable to severe cases of covid-19, we need to rethink what we know about infection

Mouse neurons trapped inside cages grow long appendages to connect to each other. Trapping the cells allows us to precisely control their growth

On a Mother's Day unlike previous ones, here are a few ideas to help you celebrate, whether your mom is near, far, or socially isolating.

As Quebec prepares to reopen schools, doctors are poring over 15-20 cases of children with what seems to be the same illnesses reported in U.S. and Europe

Perhaps lamenting my ballooning figure in the face of a world-historic cataclysm seems glib. Still, I’m demoralized by the loss of my abs

Some of this year's Oscar nominees, including Andrew Garfield and Michael Shannon, react to news of their nomination.

Oscar-winning Iranian director Asghar Farhadi said Sunday he will not attend the Academy Awards on Feb. 26, “even if exceptions were to be made for my trip,” as protests over President Donald Trump's immigration ban spread to Hollywood's biggest global stage.