57145 Kommentare

• Kommentar-Link Dienstag, 01 April 2025 08:25 gepostet von Danielzef

  ‘White Lotus’ villain Jon Gries reveals the true crimes that inspired his twisty take on Greg/Gary
  fixedfloat exchange
  When Season 3 of “The White Lotus” premiered last month, the shock was palpable when returning character Belinda recognized a familiar face at the resort in Thailand: Greg Hunt, the wily suitor of the late Tanya McQuoid.
  
  As the season has unfolded, Greg (played by Jon Gries) has emerged as an antagonist, particularly after Belinda dove into the investigation surrounding Tanya’s death and learned that Greg, who now goes by Gary, evaded questioning by authorities.
  
  On a show famous for reinventing itself, the same has been asked of the actor, who says that playing the ever-shifting character has been a welcome challenge and, like “White Lotus” itself, full of twists.
  
  “In the beginning, I totally played him for a guy who was, you know, on his last legs,” Gries said in a recent interview with CNN, referencing Greg’s very apparent ill health in the first season of “White Lotus,” which premiered to rave reviews in summer 2021. He added: “When you play a character, you want to find his empathetic side, and you want to understand where they came from, and what got them to where they are.”
  
  But when he was contacted by creator Mike White about appearing in Season 2, Gries realized he would have to adjust his framing of Greg, despite having previously imagined a “comprehensive history” for him on his own.
  
  “(White) said, ‘I’m writing it right now, and I’m writing you, and I just need to know here and now: If you’re in, I’ll continue writing. If not, I’ll stop,’” Gries recalled.
• Kommentar-Link Dienstag, 01 April 2025 08:25 gepostet von ByronCew

  Critics say this power imbalance is clear in the 2016 contract Guyana signed with Exxon. Under the agreement, Exxon keeps 75% of everything it makes from its oil operations in Guyana, with the remaining 25% shared equally between the company and the government, which also takes a 2% royalty.
  lido fi
  “It was a bad deal,” Ali said in the BBC interview, but he has rejected the idea of unilaterally changing the agreement, which was signed by the previous government. He says the next contract with Exxon will be on different terms.
  
  An Exxon spokesperson said the contract is “globally competitive for countries at a similar stage of exploration” and said Guyana is averaging $1 billion a year in “oil profits.”
  
  Exxon has also faced a number of lawsuits over its potential environmental impact, many filed by Melinda Janki, a Guyanese international lawyer, who drafted the country’s Environmental Protection Act back in the 1990s.
  
  A big victory for Guyana’s people and environment came in 2023, when the court ruled Exxon should have unlimited liability for the costs of any oil spill. Exxon has since appealed the ruling and has posted a $2 billion guarantee while it awaits the appeal outcome.
  Exxon said this commitment supplements “its robust balance sheets … and the insurance policies they already had in place.” Janki says this isn’t enough. Offshore oil spills can be extremely expensive to deal with, the 2010 Deepwater Horizon spill cost nearly $70 billion to clean up.
  
  The push and pull between those who say oil offers Guyana a brighter future and those who fear the industry’s impact will continue.
  
  Exxon said it’s had a positive impact on the country, including employing more than 6,200 people, investing more than $2 billion with local Guyanese businesses since 2015 and spending more than $43 million on community projects.
• Kommentar-Link Dienstag, 01 April 2025 01:14 gepostet von Bobbynem

  A federal judge on Tuesday afternoon temporarily blocked part of the Trump administration’s plans to freeze all federal aid, a policy that unleashed confusion and worry from charities and educators even as the White House said it was not as sweeping an order as it appeared.
  kra30 at
  The short-term pause issued by US District Judge Loren L. AliKhan prevents the administration from carrying through with its plans to freeze funding for “open awards” already granted by the federal government through at least 5 p.m. ET Monday, February 3.
  https kra17 at
  The judge’s administrative stay is “a way of preserving the status quo” while she considers the challenge brought by a group of non-profits to the White House plans, AliKhan said.
  kra28 at
  “The government doesn’t know the full scope of the programs that are going to be subject to the pause,” AliKhan said after pressing an attorney for the Justice Department on what programs the freeze would apply to. AliKhan is expected to consider a longer-term pause on the policy early next week.
  kra30 cc
  The White House budget office had ordered the pause on federal grants and loans, according to an internal memorandum sent Monday.
  
  Federal agencies “must temporarily pause all activities related to obligation or disbursement of all Federal financial assistance,” White House Office of Management and Budget acting director Matthew Vaeth said in the memorandum, a copy of which was obtained by CNN, citing administration priorities listed in past executive orders.
  kra29 at
  
  https://at-kra27.cc
• Kommentar-Link Montag, 31 März 2025 20:57 gepostet von Herberttog

  A tiny rainforest country is growing into a petrostate. A US oil company could reap the biggest rewards
  swell
  Guyana’s destiny changed in 2015. US fossil fuel giant Exxon discovered nearly 11 billion barrels of oil in the deep water off the coast of this tiny, rainforested country.
  
  It was one of the most spectacular oil discoveries of recent decades. By 2019, Exxon and its partners, US oil company Hess and China-headquartered CNOOC, had started producing the fossil fuel.? They now pump around 650,000 barrels of oil a day, with plans to more than double this to 1.3 million by 2027.
  
  Guyana now has the world’s highest expected oil production growth through 2035.
  
  This country — sandwiched between Brazil, Venezuela and Suriname — has been hailed as a climate champion for the lush, well-preserved forests that carpet nearly 90% of its land. It is on the path to becoming a petrostate at the same time as the impacts of the fossil fuel-driven climate crisis escalate.
  
  While the government says environmental protection and an oil industry can go hand-in-hand, and low-income countries must be allowed to exploit their own resources, critics say it’s a dangerous path in a warming world, and the benefits may ultimately skew toward Exxon — not Guyana.
• Kommentar-Link Montag, 31 März 2025 20:57 gepostet von Billylurce

  Mist and microlightning
  solflare wallet
  To recreate a scenario that may have produced Earth’s first organic molecules, researchers built upon experiments from 1953 when American chemists Stanley Miller and Harold Urey concocted a gas mixture mimicking the atmosphere of ancient Earth. Miller and Urey combined ammonia (NH3), methane (CH4), hydrogen (H2) and water, enclosed their “atmosphere” inside a glass sphere and jolted it with electricity, producing simple amino acids containing carbon and nitrogen. The Miller-Urey experiment, as it is now known, supported the scientific theory of abiogenesis: that life could emerge from nonliving molecules.
  For the new study, scientists revisited the 1953 experiments but directed their attention toward electrical activity on a smaller scale, said senior study author Dr. Richard Zare, the Marguerite Blake Wilbur Professor of Natural Science and professor of chemistry at Stanford University in California. Zare and his colleagues looked at electricity exchange between charged water droplets measuring between 1 micron and 20 microns in diameter. (The width of a human hair is 100 microns.)
  
  “The big droplets are positively charged. The little droplets are negatively charged,” Zare told CNN. “When droplets that have opposite charges are close together, electrons can jump from the negatively charged droplet to the positively charged droplet.”
  The researchers mixed ammonia, carbon dioxide, methane and nitrogen in a glass bulb, then sprayed the gases with water mist, using a high-speed camera to capture faint flashes of microlightning in the vapor. When they examined the bulb’s contents, they found organic molecules with carbon-nitrogen bonds. These included the amino acid glycine and uracil, a nucleotide base in RNA.
  
  “We discovered no new chemistry; we have actually reproduced all the chemistry that Miller and Urey did in 1953,” Zare said. Nor did the team discover new physics, he added — the experiments were based on known principles of electrostatics.
  
  “What we have done, for the first time, is we have seen that little droplets, when they’re formed from water, actually emit light and get this spark,” Zare said. “That’s new. And that spark causes all types of chemical transformations.”
• Kommentar-Link Montag, 31 März 2025 20:02 gepostet von CarlosRutle

  Mindful wellness challenges
  If you’re the type of person who thrives on challenges and pushing your limits, this doesn’t mean you need to shy away from wellness challenges altogether. But before diving in, take a step back and ask yourself if you’re pursuing the challenge for the right reasons, McGregor said.
  velodrome finance
  Some people want to try these challenges because they believe something is missing from their life, and they’re looking to attain “worth” or receive validation, McGregor noted.
  
  A good way to assess your motivation is by considering whether the challenge will benefit your health or if it’s about showcasing your accomplishments on social media or some other reason.
  
  Before trying any new trend, make sure you have the foundation to handle it and be aware of any potential risks, McGregor said.
  
  For casual runners, this might mean signing up for a 5K but building your endurance gradually while incorporating other strength training exercises into your routine. For more intense challenges, such as a marathon, McGregor encourages people to consult with professionals or a coach who can monitor your progress and condition along the way.
  
  Focusing on sustainable habits
  Both McGregor and Curran emphasize the importance of fostering sustainable health habits before embarking on more extreme challenges.
  
  Rather than chasing the idea of being “healthy,” McGregor suggests focusing on actual healthful behaviors and starting small.
  
  If you’re a highly sedentary person and want to add more movement to your day, try doing lunges while brushing your teeth or taking short walks throughout your typical routine.
• Kommentar-Link Montag, 31 März 2025 19:52 gepostet von Anthonyfup

  Scientists redid an experiment that showed how life on Earth could have started. They found a new possibility
  safepal wallet
  In the 1931 movie “Frankenstein,” Dr. Henry Frankenstein howling his triumph was an electrifying moment in more ways than one. As massive bolts of lightning and energy crackled, Frankenstein’s monster stirred on a laboratory table, its corpse brought to life by the power of electricity.
  
  Electrical energy may also have sparked the beginnings of life on Earth billions of years ago, though with a bit less scenery-chewing than that classic film scene.
  
  Earth is around 4.5 billion years old, and the oldest direct fossil evidence of ancient life — stromatolites, or microscopic organisms preserved in layers known as microbial mats — is about 3.5 billion years old. However, some scientists suspect life originated even earlier, emerging from accumulated organic molecules in primitive bodies of water, a mixture sometimes referred to as primordial soup.
  
  But where did that organic material come from in the first place? Researchers decades ago proposed that lightning caused chemical reactions in ancient Earth’s oceans and spontaneously produced the organic molecules.
  
  Now, new research published March 14 in the journal Science Advances suggests that fizzes of barely visible “microlightning,” generated between charged droplets of water mist, could have been potent enough to cook up amino acids from inorganic material. Amino acids — organic molecules that combine to form proteins — are life’s most basic building blocks and would have been the first step toward the evolution of life.
• Kommentar-Link Montag, 31 März 2025 18:58 gepostet von KennethHaf

  Challenging our perceptions of ‘perfection’
  traderjoexyz
  With health influencers raising the bar for success, the wellness space now often feels like a performative space where people strive to showcase peak physical and mental strength.
  
  While seeing others’ achievements can be motivating, it can also be discouraging if your progress doesn’t match theirs.
  
  Each person is chasing the perfect version of themselves — whether it’s a body or a lifestyle — which is dangerous because this is typically an impossible or dangerous version to achieve, Curran said. He added that this type of comparison creates a dangerous cycle in which people constantly feel dissatisfied with their own progress.
  
  “It’s a fantasy in many ways, and once you start chasing after it, you constantly find yourself embroiled in a sense of doubt and deficit,” he said.
  
  Curran also noted that wellness challenges can be particularly damaging for women who struggle with perfectionism, as they tend to be bombarded with impossible beauty standards and societal expectations.
  
  Renee McGregor, a UK-based dietitian who specializes in eating disorders and athlete performance, encourages people to approach wellness trends with curiosity and skepticism. That’s because some influencers and celebrities could be promoting products because there’s a financial benefit for them.
  
  “The thing to ask yourself about the person you’re taking advice from is what do they gain from it?” McGregor said. “If they are going to gain financially, then you know that they (could be willing) to sell you a lie.”
  Whether you want to try a new challenge or product that promises amazing results, McGregor suggests doing your research and seeking diverse perspectives, including consulting with doctors when possible.
• Kommentar-Link Montag, 31 März 2025 18:57 gepostet von Josephrally

  Greenland’s leader says US officials’ visit is ‘highly aggressive.’ Trump says it’s ‘friendliness, not provocation’
  extra fi
  Greenland’s prime minister said a planned visit to the island by US officials, including second lady Usha Vance, is “highly aggressive,” plunging relations to a new low after President Donald Trump vowed to annex the autonomous Danish territory.
  
  But despite the backlash, Trump has insisted the visit is about “friendliness, not provocation” – and claims the US team was “invited.”
  
  Vance, the wife of US Vice President JD Vance, will travel to Greenland this week to watch the island’s national dogsled race and “celebrate Greenlandic culture and unity,” according to a statement from the White House. National security adviser Mike Waltz is also expected to visit the territory this week, according to a source familiar with the trip.
  
  Greenland Prime Minister Mute B. Egede called the US delegation’s trip to the island “highly aggressive” in an interview with Greenlandic newspaper Sermitsiaq on Sunday, and raised particular objection to Waltz’s visit.
  
  “What is the national security adviser doing in Greenland? The only purpose is to demonstrate power over us,” Egede said. “His mere presence in Greenland will no doubt fuel American belief in Trump’s mission — and the pressure will increase.”
  
  Trump claimed on Monday that people in Greenland have responded warmly to the US’s recent interest in the territory. “They’re calling us. We’re not calling them. And we were invited over there,” he said.
  
  “We’re dealing with a lot of people from Greenland that would like to see something happen with respect to them being properly protected and properly taken care of,” Trump told reporters following a meeting with his Cabinet.
  
  “I think Greenland is going to be something that maybe is in our future,” Trump added.
  
  The president said he believes Secretary of State Marco Rubio would be traveling to Greenland too.
  
  Trump’s idea to annex Greenland has thrown an international spotlight on the territory, which holds vast stores of rare earth minerals critical for high-tech industries, and has raised questions about the island’s future security as the US, Russia and China vie for influence in the Arctic. Trump has repeatedly expressed interest in the US taking the island by force or economic coercion, even as Denmark and Greenland have firmly rejected the idea.
• Kommentar-Link Montag, 31 März 2025 18:57 gepostet von Robertvef

  Family affair
  rhino fi
  Americans Brittany and Blake Bowen had never even been to Ecuador when in 2021 they decided to move to the South American country with their four children.
  
  Tired of “long commutes and never enough money” in the US, the Bowens say they love their new Ecuadorian life. “We hope that maybe we’ll have grandkids here one day.”
  
  Erik and Erin Eagleman moved to Switzerland from Wisconsin with their three children in 2023.
  
  “It feels safe here,” they tell CNN of their new outdoorsy lifestyle in Basel, close to the borders with France and Germany. Their youngest daughter even walks to elementary school by herself.
  
  For adventures with your own family, be it weekend breaks or something longer-term, our partners at CNN Underscored, a product review and recommendations guide owned by CNN, have this roundup of the best kids’ luggage sets and bags.
  
  Starry, starry nights
  For close to 100 years, Michelin stars have been a sign of culinary excellence, awarded only to the great and good.
  
  Georges Blanc, the world’s longest-standing Michelin-starred restaurant, has boasted a three-star rating since 1981, but this month the Michelin guide announced that the restaurant in eastern France was losing a star.
  
  More culinary reputations were enhanced this week, when Asia’s 50 best restaurants for 2025 were revealed. The winner was a Bangkok restaurant which is no stranger to garlands, while second and third place went to two Hong Kong eateries.
  
  You don’t need to go to a heaving metropolis for excellent food, however. A 200-year-old cottage on a remote stretch of Ireland’s Atlantic coast has been given a Michelin star. At the time of awarding, Michelin called it “surely the most rural” of its newest winners.