Category Archives: New Utopia

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In the 1960s, Star Trek dazzled audiences, demonstrating retina scans and facial recognition scans as a part of their digital security system. Robocop, a 1987 Hollywood movie, unveiled futuristic police checking digital facial recognition instead of a drivers licence. Steven Spielbergs Minority Report (2002) showed Tom Cruise, who is on the run, walk into a retail store. The retailer has technology that recognises each arriving shopper and instantly displays the images of clothing by the taste and preferences of the customer.

Facial recognition is a relatively new technology that law enforcement agencies worldwide have started adopting to identify persons of interest. Face recognition identifies or verifies an individual by comparing and analysing patterns, shapes and proportions of their facial characteristics and contours. Police organisations are regularly utilising facial recognition to uncover probable crime suspects and witnesses by skimming through millions of photos.

Authorities are also exploiting this technology for surveillance at public venues like concerts and stadiums and to gain entry into specific properties. Most police departments are today considering face recognition to be an indispensable tool to solve the most heinous crimes, like terrorist attacks and violent assaults.

For instance, in New York City in 2019, a man followed a young woman home from work. He attempted to kidnap and rape her at knifepoint, after hauling her into a grassy area before ultimately letting her go. Investigators employed facial recognition technology to compare pictures from surveillance video at a food shop closeby with a mugshot database. A little more investigative work enabled the police to identify a suspect and arrest him within 24 hours. The 27-year-old suspect arrested previously for raping a 73-year-old lady was on bail when the offence was committed. In February this year, Delhi police used facial recognition technology to identify more than 1,500 rioters who had created communal unrest in the north-east region of Delhi.

Further, the use of facial recognition technology in India helped police find 3,000 missing children in four days. Scanning 45,000 children in New Delhi would be an almost ridiculous chore using conventional methods. But facial recognition technology could sift through the data in a matter of hours, enabling thousands of children to be identified, matched to missing person complaints, and reunited with their families.

The Interpol Face Recognition System (IFRS) contains facial images from more than 179 countries, making it a distinctive transnational criminal database. Since 2016, more than 1,000 criminals, fugitives, persons of interest or missing persons have been identified using Interpol system.

Back in India, there have been several FRT endeavours. Telangana police have created a facial recognition system that enables them identify offenders by comparing the suspects faces with digital photographs in a central database called Crime and Criminal Tracking Networks and Systems (CCTNS). Chennai police used a face recognition software called FaceTagr, developed by a Chennai-based company to police the Deepavali shopping crowds. Similarly, Amritsar police use a face recognition technology developed by a Gurugram AI company Staqu Technologies called Punjab Artificial Intelligence System (PAIS) that could detect a murder case within 24 hours.

The Staqu-developed PAIS claims that it can match images with a precision of 98 per cent if the database has five photos of the person. Elsewhere, the Surat Police are using the state-of-the-art NeoFace tech of NEC for solving crimes. In 2018, Andhra Pradesh launched e-Pragati, a searchable database of millions of people containing e-KYC Aadhaar numbers. Uttar Pradesh Police in December 2018 attempted Trinetra, an AI-based application with face recognition capabilities and a database containing five lakh criminals.

Unlike DNA technology, facial recognition is not expensive and time-consuming, once installed the facial system needs little overheads or expenses. The relative ease of the process makes it easy to incorporate it as a part of daily work. Much of the fear about facial recognition technology is because the public knows little about how police are using the technology and whether it has effectively lessened crime. The police departments that use facial recognition have not been forthright about how they use the technology. As long as police departments continue to use face recognition under this information void, the retaliation against the technology will likely grow more robust, no matter the potential upsides. Unfortunately, most of the time, police have been found using the technology to solve routine crimes.

The technology can add value if used properly. At present, people do not have a good understanding of technology; hence a little education could help in gaining acceptance. Civil liberties groups have been crying hoarse that facial recognition contributes to privacy erosion, bolsters bias against minorities and is susceptible to misuse. San Francisco, Boston and a prominent police body camera manufacturer have banned FRT by law enforcement. IBM too has backed away from its work in this area. The biggest fear is that the government might misuse the technology for surveillance.

The Boston Marathon bombings brought out the limitations of facial-recognition technology. Facial recognition technology is less accurate on people of colour. Further, the error rate is higher for men than women. CyberExtruder, a reputable company supplying facial recognition software to law enforcement agencies, has accepted that some skin colours give high error rates. Some facial recognition systems have an accuracy rate of 99.31 per cent on the still frontal face. Modifications in lighting, face positioning, facial expressions, profile pictures etc diminishes the precision rate. A big smile can render the system less effective.

Facial recognition being a powerful technology, the State should consider its use only for law enforcement and national security, that too, with adequate safeguards. Aadhaar has iris and biometric information; there appears to be a move to strengthen it with facial recognition. Once that is done, Aadhaar will have total surveillance infrastructure. Usage of facial recognition technology in the absence of any data protection or data privacy law could result in misuse of the technology. There is no legal provision to stop its misuse in India. The Information Technology Act, 2000 does not have provisions to deal with the abuse of technology. Cybercriminals appear to be taking advantage of this situation by making such data available on the darknet.

Finally, recognising our spiritual nature or spiritual recognition technology could go a long way in overcoming facial recognition technology concerns. If we treat faces as just another unit of data, that is to be harvested by the global surveillance machine, something sacred and spiritually deep within us gets transgressed. Counteracting the consequent dystopia recognising our spiritual nature and connecting to the divine blueprint of the soul could help us experience utopia even in a dystopian world.

The author is director, Directorate of Vigilance and Anti-Corruption (DVAC)

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Emerging face of facial recognition technology - DTNEXT

China has landed on the moon three times, and even managed to bring one of its robotic lunar explorers back to Earth. Can it now pull off the challenge of landing on Mars?

The countrys space agency completed a key step toward that goal on Wednesday when Tianwen-1, the spacecraft the country launched last July, began its orbit of the red planet, according to state media reports. By accomplishing this feat, China completed its first successful journey to another planet in our solar system.

The spacecraft was also the second to arrive at Mars in two days, following a United Arab Emirates probe that began orbiting the neighboring world on Tuesday.

Tianwen-1 left Earth last summer, taking advantage of a period when Mars and Earth were closest to each other during their journeys around the sun. That allowed a relatively short transit between the two worlds.

To catch up with Mars, the spacecraft fired its engines on several occasions, correcting its course so it could approach the red planet at the correct angle. After the most recent engine firing on Feb. 5, the probe sent back pictures of the red planet from a distance of about 1.3 million miles.

On Wednesday at 7:52 p.m. in Beijing (6:52 a.m. Eastern time), the engine lit up again for 15 minutes, expending much of the spacecrafts remaining fuel in a braking maneuver. That slowed it considerably, and allowed the probe to be captured by Martian gravity into an elliptical orbit. It will now circle at a safe distance, joining the cast of other robotic explorers in Martian orbit as it prepares for that later surface landing attempt.

In arriving at Mars, China far surpassed its last attempt at an interplanetary mission, which failed nearly 10 years ago, although through no fault of the countrys own. That Mars-bound spacecraft, Yinghuo-1, burned up in Earths atmosphere when the Russian rocket it was traveling on failed in flight.

But while the arrival at Mars was a new milestone for Chinas space program, a bigger challenge for the Tianwen-1 mission is a few months away.

The orbiter carries a lander and a rover which will make the difficult transit to the surface. China says it will attempt to land on Mars as early as May, but it has not specified a date.

Its destination is Utopia Planitia, a large basin in the northern hemisphere that most likely was once impacted by a meteor, and which was visited by NASAs Viking 2 lander in 1976. One goal of the Tianwen-1 mission is to better understand the distribution of ice in this region, which future human colonists on Mars could use to sustain themselves.

Landing on the red planet is perilous. Spacecraft descend at a high speed and the thin atmosphere does little to help slow the trip to the ground. Air friction still generates extreme heat that must be absorbed or dissipated. A number of Soviet, NASA and European missions have crashed. Only NASA has landed intact more than once.

The Chinese spacecraft will spend months orbiting Mars to check systems and pick a landing spot that will not be too treacherous.

Should it land in one piece, the rover will need a name. After nominations from people in China, a panel of experts selected 10 semifinalists. Among them, according to state media, are Hongyi, from a Chinese word for ambition and persistence; Qilin, a hoofed creature of Chinese legend; and Nezha, a young deity who is considered a patron of rebellious youth.

Since China launched its mission to Mars in July, it has been to the moon and back.

The Change-5 mission lifted off in November, collected lunar samples and then brought them back to Earth for scientists to study. It was the first new cache of moon rocks since the Soviet Unions last lunar mission in 1976.

Chinas Change-4 mission, the first to land on the moons far side, is still in operation and its Yutu-2 rover is still studying the lunar surface more than two years after it launched.

The first robotic probe to arrive at Mars this year was Hope, an orbiter from the United Arab Emirates emerging space agency. It arrived on Tuesday, and will embark on a study of the red planets atmosphere, helping planetary scientists understand the weather dynamics of Mars.

The third new visitor to Mars will be Perseverance, NASAs newest rover. It launched a bit later than the other two spacecraft last July, and will skip Martian orbit, heading directly to the planets surface on Feb. 18.

The robotic explorer would be NASAs fifth rover on Mars, and it is very similar to Curiosity, which is now exploring the Gale crater. The new rover carries a different set of scientific instruments and will explore the Jezero crater, a dried-out lake that scientists believe could be a good target to seek fossilized evidence of extinct Martian microbial life.

The mission will also attempt a new first on the red planet: flying a helicopter in the wispy Martian atmosphere. NASAs Ingenuity helicopter will be dropped off by the rover not long after landing. Then it will attempt a number of test flights in air as thin as the upper reaches of Earths atmosphere, aiming to demonstrate that Mars can be explored through the air as well as on the ground.

Its getting a bit crowded around the red planet.

In addition to the new arrivals, six more orbiters are currently studying the planet from space. Three were sent there by NASA: Mars Odyssey, launched in 2001, Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter, launched in 2005, and MAVEN, which left Earth in 2013.

Europe has two spacecraft in orbit. Its Mars Express orbiter was launched in 2003, and the ExoMars Trace Gas Orbiter lifted off in 2016 and is shared with Russias space program.

India operates the sixth spacecraft, the Mars Orbiter Mission, also known as Mangalyaan, which launched in 2013.

Two American missions are currently operating on the ground. Curiosity has been roving since 2012. It is joined by InSight, which has been studying marsquakes and other inner properties of the red planet since 2018. A third American mission, the Opportunity rover, expired in 2019 when a dust storm caused it to lose power.

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Chinas Mars Mission Begins Orbit of the Red Planet - The New York Times

The Shadow King is working behind the scenes with the children on Krakoa and it seems he's trying to humiliate the young X-Men... or worse.

WARNING: The following contains spoilers for New Mutants #15 by Vita Ayala, Rod Reis & VC's Travis Lanham, on sale now.

While most mutants are trying to live in peace in their new utopia on Krakoa, some couldn't help but remain bad. Sabretooth lost his freedom at the very start of the nation's development. Mister Sinister has his own devious plans in motion thanks to his hidden cloning labs. Sebastian Shaw has a seat at the big table and still killed Kate Pryde, although he was since punished. Now, it seems Shadow King has started to orchestrate something behind the scenes, planting discontent in the younger mutants' minds.

New Mutants #14 opened with Amahl Farouk's origin and how he went from an idealistic young boy who wanted to do good and help others into the vengeful and manipulative Shadow King. Giving so much time to his origin, it is clear that the youngest mutants on Krakoa, and their new instructors of the original New Mutants team members, might have a lot to fear from the powerful mutant, who found a home high in the mountains of Krakoa.

RELATED:X-Men: New Mutants Looks Back At Marvel's Most Unhealthy Relationship

The New Mutants aretraining the kidsbut some new students feel like outsiders, even among their mutant brethren. Four of these mutant children are Anole, Rain Boy, Cosmar, and N0-Girl. The four childrenend up goingto the mountains and found Shadow King.It was there that they had a lot to tell him, including what they learned. He welcomed them all to sit around a fire and tell him their stories because they have "all the time in the world." However, this is the Shadow King, and these are all impressionable children, so there is no way he is just playing the role of the kind old mutant who wants to hear their stories.

He's still with the kids and this time he was watching and helping train them. They were all working hard for Shadow King, who taught these impressionable young mutants there are no odds they can't overcome, and then he mentions the Crucible. He especially praises Cosmar, congratulating her on how far she has come. When she asks him to come to watch her fight, he tells her he wouldn't miss it for the world. The Crucible is a ritual death where a mutant who has yet to regain his or her powers fights another mutant to the death and they return with their powers returned. The problem here is that Cosmar has her powers.

At the wedding reception forDouglas and Bei, Cosmar approached Dani Moonstar and asked her to be her partner in the Crucible, something Cosmar had wanted since she first manifested her powers. However, Dani rejected her and said the Crucible is to heal mutants rubbed of their gifts, but that Corsar is perfect the way she is. Cosmar ran off in tears, saying Dani's powers never mutated her and as she left broken, Shadow King gave a toast to the youth and a great future.

RELATED:X-Men: New Mutants Sets Up the Return of a POWERFUL Mutant God

There is a disturbing aside in the book from the journal of Amahl Farouk where the Shadow is clearly manipulating him, making him think he is using his powers to help others be better until eventually realizing he needs to shape and rule the world from the shadows. There was no way that the Crucible could have cured Corsar's physical mutations, so Shadow King only filled the child with false hopes. Whether he is trying to turn the youth of Krakoa against the elder mutants or just humiliate them, this was one of the harshest things he could have done to a mutant like Cosmar who looks up to him.

KEEP READING:X-Men: One New Mutant Just Got an IMMORTAL New Title

Taskmaster #2

Shawn S. Lealos is a freelance writer who received his Bachelor's degree in Journalism from the University of Oklahoma with a minor in Film Studies. He has worked as a journalist for 25 years, starting in newspapers and magazines before moving to online media as the world changed. Shawn is a former member of the Society of Professional Journalists and a current voting member of the Oklahoma Film Critics Circle. He has work published on websites like The Huffington Post, Time Warner Cable, Yahoo Movies, The Movie Network, Chud, Renegade Cinema, 411mania, and Monsters & Critics. Shawn is also a published author, with a non-fiction book about the Stephen King Dollar Baby Filmmakers and has begun work on a new fiction series as well. Visit Shawn Lealos' website to learn more about his novel writing and follow him on Twitter @sslealos.

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X-Men: The Shadow King Is Corrupting the Youngest Mutants | CBR - CBR - Comic Book Resources

Editor's note: This is an excerpt of Planet Money's newsletter. You can sign up here.

In the economist's utopian vision of the stock market, clearheaded investors diligently evaluate companies and invest only in the ones they expect to grow and thrive. In the process, investors direct resources where they'll be most productive, benefiting the overall economy.

The GameStop circus over the last few weeks showed again that the real stock market is a far cry from Utopia. To some, GameStop was a chance to make a quick buck on a speculative roller coaster. To others, it was a way to stick it to Wall Street. But if taking on Wall Street really is the goal, meme-fueled rallies aren't likely to bring lasting change.

A growing chorus of policy wonks is arguing we should channel populist discontent with Wall Street in a more productive direction. Instead of trying to hurt hedge funds by artificially inflating the price of a company that's basically Blockbuster for games, they say, we should mobilize to impose a tax on stock trading. This could help bring greater sanity to trading and limit one of Wall Street's competitive advantages: high-frequency trading with supercomputers that can make like gazillions of transactions per second.

"A small tax 0.1% on each Wall Street trade would reduce high frequency trading, a practice which drains profits from retail investors and benefits only the very rich," tweeted Congresswoman Ilhan Omar during the GameStop firestorm.

The idea behind this kind of levy is not new. It's had all sorts of iterations over the years: a financial transactions tax, a speculation tax, a Tobin tax, and years before the stock trading app was founded a "Robin Hood" tax. A core idea behind all of these taxes has been to raise the cost of trading in order to discourage investors from making frivolous bets, and to encourage them to invest only if they believe companies will be profitable over the long run. But rather than rising, the cost of trading has gone in the opposite direction in recent decades. Today, for both Wall Street investors with supercomputers and small-time investors with apps, it costs almost nothing to trade.

From James Tobin to Larry Summers, a long line of economists has supported the idea of a financial transaction tax. In his magnum opus, The General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money, John Maynard Keynes expressed his enthusiasm for one. "The proper social purpose" of Wall Street, he said, "is to direct new investment into the most profitable channels in terms of future yield." But when it begins to resemble "the activities of a casino, the job is likely to be ill-done." Hello, GameStop.

In 2011, a thousand economists from 53 countries signed a letter urging G20 countries to implement a small financial transaction tax to raise funds for fighting global poverty. But not all economists support the idea. Right-leaning economists and think tanks tend to argue that it will cause trading to move to other nations, discourage trades that benefit the overall economy, and fail to raise much money.

Numerous countries already have financial transaction taxes, and, we should note, their track record is mixed. Sweden adopted one in 1984, which they kept tweaking to try to get to work. By 1986, if you bought or sold a stock through a Swedish brokerage firm, you faced a 1% tax. Foreign brokerage firms, however, were exempt as a result half of all stock trading moved from Sweden to London. Meanwhile, the tax never raised much revenue, so it was eliminated in the early 1990s.

The UK's financial transaction tax has been a bit more successful. In 1694, King William III levied a stamp duty on all paper transactions. A version of that levy still exists, taxing many stock trades at 0.5%. Unlike the defunct Swedish tax, it applies to trades of shares of any UK company, regardless where traders are based. A report from Brookings finds the British stamp duty, unlike the Swedish version, has been pretty successful, showing how much policy details matter.

The United States actually also has a financial transaction tax. It funds the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC). But the tax is so minuscule nobody seems to notice it. For most kinds of financial transactions, the rate the SEC will charge for 2021 is $5.10 for every million dollars traded (which, by the way, is a tax rate of .00051%). Since the financial crisis, a long list of progressive politicians have called for new financial transaction taxes, including Rep. Peter Defazio, who introduced such a bill last month.

Would a financial transaction tax have stopped the kind of wild swings in GameStop's stock we've seen over the past few weeks? Probably not. With a 0.1% tax, if you bought $400 worth of GameStop stock, the tax would be just 40 cents. But such a tax would add up to a much bigger deal for high-frequency traders, who can make multiple trades in milliseconds. While it may not have the razzle dazzle of Reddit-inspired stock roller coasters, taxation might be a more effective way to curb Wall Street excesses.

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After GameStop, A Better Way To Take On Wall Street? - NPR

One night in May of last year, the animator Marcie LaCerte dreamed that she found herself in the middle of a crowded Gap without a face mask. The scene brought on a familiar panic; the classic dream distress of being naked in public, with the faux pas updated to fit pandemic life. LaCerte animated the dream, along with a series of others, for the film above, Invisible Monsters and Tomato Soup, produced by Stevie Borrello and Meghan McDonough.

The idea for the film arose during the early weeks of the pandemic, when the three filmmakers were, like many people, catching up via video call. They had been experiencing vivid and odd dreams since going into lockdown, and began collecting ones from others, solicited through social media, Reddit, survey sites, and from their own acquaintances. They combed through the more than eighty responses they received, looking for interview subjects with visually compelling dreams, eventually narrowing the list down to twenty, from respondents spanning five continents.

LaCerte told me that, throughout the process, the filmmakers kept in mind the fact that dreams recounted in the light of day tend to be less than riveting. Listening to a dream can be exhausting, LaCerte said, because its typically a whole big narrative, with details that are only relevant to one persons subconscious. In order to counter that phenomenon, they focussed on teasing out concepts that ran through multiple dreams, in an effort to glean something universal, despite the disparate experiences of dreamers in countries with very different responses to the pandemic. Borrello described the process as like being a detective with wires on a board, finding the themes that connect and then whittling it down. These ranged from small oddities that cropped up repeatedly, like lizards and childhood acquaintances, to broader tropes, like experiences of physical touch tinged with danger.

To place the motifs they were getting from respondents into the context of the field of dream research, the filmmakers consulted Deirdre Barrett, an assistant professor of psychology at Harvard and the author of Pandemic Dreams. The filmmakers latched onto a phenomenon that Barrett has identified as invisible monsters, stand-ins that crop up in place of COVID-19 in anxiety dreams. Barrett told me that, when a crisis isnt associated with specific memorable images, one disaster will show up as another. In contrast, dreams that she studied in the aftermath of 9/11 were, for example, quite closely tied to reality. Even when the event itself didnt appear, planes, crumbling buildings, and fire were constant tropes. Although masks and ventilators do make appearances in the COVID-19 dreams that Barrett has recorded, particularly those of health-care workers, the virus itself is more slippery in its representations, sometimes replaced by invisible spectres, like threatening footsteps or simply the knowledge that something ominous lurks outside, and sometimes by concrete dangers appearing in place of the virus, like natural disasters or evil beings.

The dreams in Invisible Monsters and Tomato Soup run the gamut: some are nightmares; some feature figures of comfort, as McDonough put it, like the grandmother of a childhood friend. To capture this range in her animation, LaCerte created a visual world that fit multiple moods. Rather than make the monsters and threatening figures appear frightening, as they were in the original dreams, LaCerte gave them kind eyes and friendly smiles. A pair of menacing, knife-wielding radioactive lizards share an endearing moment, when one presents the other with a bouquet. Even a Boschian blue demon sitting in the middle of a fiery hellscape gobbling up a human victim has a surprisingly pleasant expression on its face. LaCerte uses color to communicate changes in tone. Nightmares appear in dark, saturated tones, shifting to a gentler, pastel palette for dreams about reassuring visits from the dead or distant loved ones. A bright shade of scarlet runs through the changing color schemes, evoking, by turns, danger (a hand whose touch feels like fire), warmth and light (lanterns at a Chinese market, hot sand), and comfort (cans of Campbells soup). Barrett told me that colorful, vivid dreams have become more common during the pandemic, along with dream recall, particularly for people who had previously suffered from a chronic lack of sleep. Pandemic-induced insomnia aside, working or attending school from home has allowed some people to sleep in slightly later than they had normally, and to experience the longer REM periods that occur in the final cycles of sleep.

In March, Barrett began collecting dream reports from around the world using a survey and categorizing the thousands of responses she received into a few core groups: dreams about the dead, isolation, illness, and so on. Common themes have evolved over the course of the pandemic. Last spring, many dreams reflected fears about infection itself, expressed through swarms of insects or toxic air. As the pandemic dragged on, these gave way to dreams about secondary implications: financial and employment anxiety, dread about returning to offices, dread about not returning to offices, and stress about helping kids with schooling at home, such as the one Barrett recorded in which a mother dreamed that her ten-year-olds entire class was being sent to her house for her to teach until the school could reopen.

As vaccines have been rolled out in recent months, Barrett told me, dreams about a post-pandemic world have started to crop up. Everyones COVID-free dreamscape is different: one woman found that a whale had moved into her swimming pool; another described a world in which Bernie Sanders was President and was busy rolling out plans to kick-start the economy with a marijuana initiative. More and more frequently, Barrett told me, dreamers are envisioning an environmental reset, in which they step outside into a utopia filled with clear air, clean water, and thriving wildlife. In the final image of Invisible Monsters and Tomato Soup, a woman flies above this kind of world. During the pandemic, dreaming has become something of a hobby, this dreamer explains via voiceover. At the end of each day, she cant wait to go to bed she says, gliding gently over chartreuse hills and baby-blue lakes.

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The Mysteries and Motifs of Pandemic Dreams - The New Yorker

WASHINGTON--(BUSINESS WIRE)--National Geographic President of Content Courteney Monroe unveiled today the spring schedule of premieres for National Geographics premium science, adventure and exploration content at the Television Critics Association Virtual Winter Press Tour.

In the wake of this extraordinary and unprecedented year, we remain focused at National Geographic on telling stories that remind us that beauty and wonder still exist in our world, said Monroe. From IMPACT with Gal Gadot to Secrets of The Whales and the return of Uncharted with Gordon Ramsay, National Geographic transports audiences around the globe, inspiring a new generation of explorers and adventurers.

Highlights of National Geographic Contents new premieres include the highly anticipated March 21 debut of Genius: Aretha starring Cynthia Erivo as Aretha Franklin; March 29 premiere of a night of adventure with new series Race to the Center of the Earth, from The Amazing Race producers, paired with a new season of fan-favorite adventure series Running Wild with Bear Grylls; Memorial Day premiere of new personality-driven series Breaking Bobby Bones paired with a new season of Gordon Ramsay: Uncharted; new digital doc shorts series National Geographic Presents: IMPACT with Gal Gadot dropping on April 19 across National Geographic digital and social platforms; and the Disney+ Earth Day premiere of the original series Secrets of the Whales, from executive producer James Cameron and featuring National Geographic Photographer Brian Skerry.

Full press releases and trailers for Genius: Aretha, Running Wild with Bear Grylls, Race to the Center of the Earth, National Geographic Presents: IMPACT with Gal Gadot, Secrets of the Whales, Gordon Ramsay: Uncharted, Breaking Bobby Bones and Red Summer can be found at natgeotvpressroom.com.

National Geographic Content - NEW PREMIERE DATES (U.S. ONLY):

MARCH

OWN THE ROOM on Disney+ from National Geographic Documentary Films (NEW DOC)Premieres Friday, March 12LINK TO TRAILER: https://youtu.be/BS1n2UDqYzU

Five students from disparate corners of the planet take their big ideas to Macau, China, host of one of the most prestigious entrepreneurship competitions in the world, the Global Student Entrepreneur Awards. Santosh is from a small farming town in Nepal; Alondra works the register at her familys bakery in Puerto Rico; Henry is a programming wiz from Nairobi; Jason is a marketing machine from Greece; and Daniela is an immigrant escaping the crisis in Venezuela, taking on the chemical industry from her lab at NYU. Theyve each overcome immense obstacles in pursuit of their dreams, from hurricanes to poverty to civil unrest. Their ideas have already changed their own lives, but are they ready to change the world?

DR. OAKLEY, YUKON VET on Nat Geo WILD (Returning Series)Premieres Saturday, March 13, 9/8cAll previous seasons of Dr. Oakley, Yukon Vet are available to stream on Disney+

Every day is a unique challenge for Dr. Michelle Oakley, the only all-species vet for hundreds of miles across the Great North. Whether wrestling bison, tracking ibex in the mountains, performing surgery on a wolverine, or braving fierce landscapes to return moose calves to the wild, Dr. Oakley will do whatever it takes to keep the animals in her charge safe and healthy.

GENIUS: ARETHA on National Geographic (New Season of Anthology Series)(Imagine Entertainments Brian Grazer and Ron Howard, Clive Davis, 20th Television, MWM Studios and EUE/Sokolow)Four-night Television Event Premieres Sunday, March 21 at 9/8c, with back-to-back episodes, available next day on HuluLINK TO TRAILER: https://youtu.be/ryGpdVuuq_Y

Genius is National Geographic's critically acclaimed anthology series that dramatizes the fascinating stories of the worlds most brilliant innovators, their extraordinary achievements and their volatile, passionate and complex personal relationships. This third season will explore Aretha Franklins musical genius and incomparable career, as well as the immeasurable impact and lasting influence she has had on music and culture around the world. Franklin was a gospel prodigy, an outspoken civil rights champion and is widely considered to be the greatest singer of the past 50 years, receiving countless honors throughout her career. Starring double-Oscar nominee Cynthia Erivo as Aretha Franklin and Emmy-award winning Courtney B. Vance as C.L. Franklin, Genius: Aretha will be the first-ever, definitive and only authorized scripted series on the life of the universally acclaimed Queen of Soul. Previous seasons, Genius: Einstein and Genius: Picasso are available to stream on Hulu.

RUNNING WILD WITH BEAR GRYLLS on National Geographic (Returning Series)Premieres Monday, March 29 at 9/8cThe previous Nat Geo season of Running Wild with Bear Grylls is available to stream on Disney+

National Geographic is officially the new home of the wildly popular hit series Running Wild with Bear Grylls. In its second season on National Geographic, world-renowned survivalist Bear Grylls returns to the wilderness eager to push the mental and physical limits of a brand-new slate of celebrities in the hit adventure series Running Wild with Bear Grylls. Hollywoods fan favorites come along for another adventurous ride to join Grylls in new challenges that make even the bravest shudder. Each week, a new celebrity guest leaves the luxury of their homes to venture into some of the most extreme environments in the world to conquer fears, test their limits and sometimes dabble in natures not-so-tasty delicacies. Continuing to push superstars comfort levels, this season Grylls travels the globe from the deserts of Utah to the Dolomites of Italy and the Sierra Nevada Mountains of California for more epic, life-changing adventures. This seasons celebrities include: Anthony Mackie (The Falcon and the Winter Soldier), Bobby Bones (Breaking Bobby Bones, American Idol), Terry Crews (Brooklyn Nine-Nine, Deadpool), Gina Carano (The Mandalorian), Keegan-Michael Key (Brain Games, Prom), Danica Patrick (former professional racing driver), Danny Trejo (Machete, Sons of Anarchy) and Rainn Wilson (The Office, Utopia).

RACE TO THE CENTER OF THE EARTH on National Geographic (New Series)Premieres Monday, March 29 at 10/9cLINK TO EXCLUSIVE SCENE FROM THE PREMIERE EPISODE: https://youtu.be/IXT6mU-4Bbo

The epic seven-part series, created by award-winning producers Bertram van Munster and Elise Doganieri, is an adrenaline-fueled global competition that pits four teams of three against one another in a nonstop sprint across the globe for a $1 million prize. Race to the Center of the Earth is an extreme non-elimination competition that follows four groups of adventurers, each starting from different corners of the earth, as they race to a buoy holding the grand prize. Racing from different corners of the planet South America, Russia, Canada and Southeast Asia, the teams will face untamed jungles, frozen arctic, arid deserts, bustling cities, treacherous mountains and vast oceans to reach the location where all four routes intersect. The first team to arrive at the buoy claims it all. Embarking on the adventure of a lifetime, these adventurous teams, made up of friends and co-workers, are confident their bond is what will lead them to the finish line.

APRIL

NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC PRESENTS: IMPACT WITH GAL GADOT on National Geographic digital and social platforms (New Digital Series)Premieres weekly beginning Monday, April 19LINK TO TRAILER: https://youtu.be/2pTc4DfFH3Q

In the heart of some of the most difficult circumstances in the world, there exist beacons of hope. National Geographic Presents: IMPACT with Gal Gadot is a compelling new six-part short-form documentary series from executive producers Gal Gadot (Wonder Woman), Jaron Varsano (Cleopatra), Academy Award-winning filmmaker Vanessa Roth (Freeheld), Entertainment Ones (eOne) Tara Long (Emmy-nominated L.A. Burning: The Riots 25 Years Later) and RPCs Ryan Pallota, that follows the powerful stories of resilient young women around the globe who overcome obstacles and do extraordinary things.

SECRETS OF THE WHALES on Disney+ (New Series)Four-Part Event Series Premieres Earth Day, April 22(From executive producer James Cameron and featuring National Geographic Explorer and Photographer Brian Skerry)

Epic, revealing and emotional, thats what you get when immersed in the secretive world of whales and see life and love from their perspectives. From Academy Award-winning filmmaker and conservationist James Cameron, Secrets of the Whales plunges viewers deep within the epicenter of whale culture to experience the extraordinary communication skills and intricate social structures of five different whale species: orcas, humpbacks, belugas, narwhals and sperm whales. Featuring the expansive knowledge and skill of acclaimed National Geographic Explorer and Photographer Brian Skerry, the four-part Earth Day special-event series unveils new science and technology to spotlight whales as they make lifelong friendships, teach clan heritage and traditions to their young, and grieve deeply for the loss of loved ones. Filmed over three years in 24 global locations, throughout this epic journey, we learn that whales are far more complex and more like us than ever imagined. Narrated by award-winning actress and conservationist Sigourney Weaver (Alien, Avatar, Gorillas in the Mist), this is a personal story that very few are lucky enough to witness until now.

In addition, National Geographic magazines May issue (available online at natgeo.com mid-April) will be a single topic Earth Day issue showcasing Skerrys bold new photography. Skerrys latest work will also be featured in the National Geographic book Secrets of the Whales, timed to the series (on sale April 6).

KINGDOM OF THE POLAR BEARS on Nat Geo WILD (New Special)Two-hour Special Premieres Earth Day, April 22 at 8/7c

As the Arctic changes faster than ever, Dennis Compayre, a veteran polar bear guide, makes an epic first-time journey following his beloved bears through the brutal Canadian winter and onto the frozen waters of Hudson Bay. In this high-stakes, high-reward venture, the team documents the secret world of polar bears and the mysterious and disappearing kingdom of ice that sustains them. The winter hunting and birthing season is a critical time for these bears and is largely undocumented, deemed too difficult and dangerous for humans to follow until now. The team, armed with traditional ecological knowledge and the latest 4K camera technology, witnesses never-before-seen seal-hunting strategies and documents rapid adaptations to climate change, including whale predation and open-water hunting.

MAY

CRITTER FIXERS: COUNTRY VETS on Nat Geo WILD (Returning Series)Premieres Saturday, May 22, 9/8cSeason one of Critter Fixers: Country Vets is available to stream on Disney+

Dr. Hodges and Dr. Ferguson are two lifelong friends who own and operate Critter Fixer Veterinary Hospitals, located 100 miles south of Atlanta. Together with their loving staff, these physicians bring real heart, soul and a lot of humor to their treatment and care of more than 20,000 patients a year across their two locations. Between emergency visits to the office and farm calls throughout rural Georgia, this special team is constantly bombarded with unique cases. From adhering Tilapia scales to save an attacked dog to assembling a splint on a rare South American bird, for the Critter Fixer team, there is no such thing as normal.

GORDON RAMSAY: UNCHARTED New Episodes on National Geographic (Returning Series)Eight-Part Third Season Premieres Monday, May 31 at 9/8c, Available Next Day on Disney+Seasons one and two of Gordon Ramsay: Uncharted are also available to stream on Disney+LINK TO CLIP: https://youtu.be/HaAItN-Bva8

Gordon Ramsay laces his boots, grabs his knives and buckles up as he hits the road to embark on exhilarating adventures, exploring world cultures through food in National Geographics Gordon Ramsay: Uncharted. The multi-Michelin-star chef and Ironman athlete feasts his way around the globe risking life and limb in daring missions in pursuit of culinary inspiration and edible excellence. Under the guidance of local experts and food legends he meets along the way, Ramsay will partake in culinary customs, learn about delicious delicacies and taste fresh flavors unique to each region. In the upcoming third season, Ramsay goes off the grid and off recipe as he feasts his way through Texas, Portugal, Croatia, Puerto Rico, Iceland, Maine, the Smoky Mountains and Mexico.

BREAKING BOBBY BONES on National Geographic (New Series)Premieres Monday, May 31 at 10/9c, with two back-to-back episodes, then moves to Sundays at 10/9c with two new episodes premiering each weekLINK TO TRAILER: https://youtu.be/nxMGX6ffveA

In each half-hour episode of Breaking Bobby Bones, Bobby Bones pursues his own mantraFight. Grind. Repeat.by traveling to far-flung destinations across the country to find people with unique jobs, skills, hobbies and abilities. Upon arrival, he meets local everyday heroes who challenge him to conquer (or at least attempt) the tricks of their trades while exploring the triumphs and tragedies that made these heroes who they are today. Through their joint experiences, viewers come along for the ride learning what its like to become a tenacious stunt artist, kayak the Colorado River blindfolded and play para hockey on a sled. Its an action-packed celebration of Americans who work hard, play hard and, above all, take pride in everything they do.

JUNE

RED SUMMER (w.t.) on National Geographic (New Documentary Film)Premieres June 2021LINK TO TRAILER: https://youtu.be/Wz0MNOivGY4

National Geographic Documentary Films partners with acclaimed filmmaker Dawn Porter ("The Way I See It," "Good Trouble: John Lewis") and Trailblazer Studios on a documentary special that sheds new light on a century-old period of intense racial conflict. Red Summer (working title) comes 100 years on from the two-day Tulsa Massacre in 1921 that led to the murder of as many as 300 Black people and left as many as 10,000 homeless and displaced. The film will premiere in June on National Geographic, commemorating Juneteenth when the last Black slaves in the U.S. heard of their emancipation. Award-winning Washington Post journalist and Tulsa native DeNeen Brown is at the heart of the film, reporting on the search for mass graves in her hometown. Digging into the events that lead to one of the worst episodes of racial violence in America's history, Brown uncovers new insights into this early 20th century period known as the Red Summer. Brown is uniquely placed to explore today's new civil rights movement in the context of the Tulsa Massacre and the Red Summer. With inside access to family members of those killed, law enforcement, archeologists and historians, Brown makes sense of the science and the politics intertwined throughout the search for Tulsa's mass grave. Leaving no stone unturned, Red Summer also untangles the role the media played in covering events at the time in order to reveal the full extent of the nation's buried past.

AMERICAS FUNNIEST HOME VIDEOS: ANIMAL EDITION on Nat Geo WILD (New Series)Premieres Sunday, June 20 at 8/7c

Americas Funniest Home Videos has been a household staple since its inception, providing hilarious entertainment from some of the most happy coincidences and epic fails in television history. But theres no question that animal videos featuring furry friends and scaly celebrities are the most entertaining yet. A spinoff of the ABC hit, Americas Funniest Home Videos: Animal Edition presents knee-slapping, tear-jerking animal humor to Nat Geo WILD!

About National Geographic Partners

National Geographic Partners LLC (NGP), a joint venture between The Walt Disney Company and the National Geographic Society, is committed to bringing the world premium science, adventure and exploration content across an unrivaled portfolio of media assets. NGP combines the global National Geographic television channels (National Geographic Channel, Nat Geo WILD, Nat Geo MUNDO, Nat Geo PEOPLE) with National Geographics media and consumer-oriented assets, including National Geographic magazines; National Geographic studios; related digital and social media platforms; books; maps; childrens media; and ancillary activities that include travel, global experiences and events, archival sales, licensing and e-commerce businesses. Furthering knowledge and understanding of our world has been the core purpose of National Geographic for 133 years, and now we are committed to going deeper, pushing boundaries, going further for our consumers and reaching millions of people around the world in 172 countries and 43 languages every month as we do it. NGP returns 27 percent of our proceeds to the nonprofit National Geographic Society to fund work in the areas of science, exploration, conservation and education. For more information visit natgeotv.com or nationalgeographic.com, or find us on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, YouTube, LinkedIn and Pinterest.

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National Geographic Announces Spring 2021 Content Rollout at the Television Critics Association Winter Press Tour - Business Wire

6 p.m. Finish up at a reasonable hour tonight. Jess is meeting a friend for a freezing-cold outdoor dinner at Meadowsweet, and I fully intend to have a beer, shut my brain off and watch TV in my home theater.

8 p.m. Watched David Byrnes American Utopia; unsurprisingly, it was awesome. Next is History of Swear Words. Nicolas Cage hams it up beautifully, but the editing is a little scattershot.

9:30 a.m. I overslept, Im really sore, and Im not gonna work out this morning. Jesss eye hurts like crazy, and it sounds a lot like when I had a scratched cornea back in college. I head out to get her remedies and an eye patch. Shes excited for some light pirate cosplay, at least.

10:30 a.m. Three different episodes are due for sponsor review on Monday, so I have an absolutely monstrous amount of editing to do. But I also have near back-to-back conference calls until 3 p.m. Im going to squeak out what I can between calls, but need to tend to my sweet Cyclops upstairs when able.

2 p.m. I crack my knuckles, update (video editing software) Premiere and dig in. Fun fact: Im currently editing footage of the leftover fried rice Im eating for lunch. Is that a fun fact? Well its fun to me. Thus completes the brown rice saga.

4:30 p.m. I receive and test out some new samples of my upcoming cookware line. Its carbon steel pans, which Im nervous about presenting as an alternative to nonstick, but once you put in a little practice, they become your lifelong friends.

8 p.m. After a nice uninterrupted chunk of productivity, all three episodes are assembled, have music laid in, and some voice-over is recorded. I really wanted to have them finalized before the weekend, but theres a solid eight-plus hours of voice-over work left to do. Im going to take a dinner break with my swashbuckling significant other, then see if Ive still got juice to keep going.

9 p.m. Nope! Im full of Thai takeout, had two mojitos, my voice is shot from all the conference calls, and its Friday. Its time to do what young lovers do: watch a pulpy murder drama. We settle on The Undoing, cuddle up under our weighted comforter (yes, of course we have one, were stressy Brooklynite millennials) and watch Nicole Kidman continue her long career of crushing it. Before we pass out, I realize that WandaVision just premiered, and I slap myself awake so I can pay attention. Im glad I do, because Wanda describes an overtly 1950s four-course meal, which Im excited to add to the Binging idea list!

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The Work Diary of a Cinematic Chef - The New York Times

Dreamcatchers comeback is off to a great start!

On January 27, Dreamcatcher Company confirmed that Dreamcatchers sixth mini album, Dystopia: Road to Utopia, had topped iTunes Top Albums charts around the globe.

The album took No. 1 in 16 regions around the world, including Spain, Russia, Sweden, Norway, Canada, Mexico, and Brazil. The album ranked within the Top 10 in 35 regions around the world, including No. 2 in regions like the United States, Germany, Australia, Denmark, and the Netherlands.

On domestic music charts, Odd Eye ranked at No. 6 on Genie andall thesongs from the albumranked from No. 1 to No. 5 on Bugs.It is also reported that Dreamcatcher, Odd Eye (the title track of the album), and Road to Utopia rose to the top of Twitters trends in 33 regions around the world.

The comeback garnered special attention from Dreamcatchers fans as it was the first time in a while that Handong was able to join the group after being unable to return to Korea due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

Dreamcatcher released Dystopia: Road to Utopia on January 26 at 6 p.m. KST. Check out the music video for Odd Eye here!

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Dreamcatcher's New Album Dystopia: Road to Utopia Tops iTunes Charts Around The World - soompi

OPINION:

It's a new year, and a fresh start for many, but some business owners have started 2021 at war with the authority that is supposed to work for them.

Cycleways are back in the headlines after it was revealed the council wants to remove on-street parking near the popular Copenhagen Bakery on Harewood Rd and replace it with cycleways.

It also wants to reduce the busy four-lane road to two lanes to "make it safer."

This is music to the ears for some, but for others, the plan is a kick in the guts.

The owner of Copenhagen Bakery has been through a lot after her city business was destroyed in the 2011 quake.

She's been through hell getting resource consents to move to Harewood, and now, she says, the council wants to "annihilate" her business.

Die-hard cycling advocates on Facebook have told her "tough, there's more to life than cars and roads. We've got to save the planet".

I understand where they're coming from, but utopia thinking doesn't need to destroy small businesses.

As I've said before, some of Christchurch's cycleways are brilliant and it's fantastic to see many cyclists, while I drive to work, particularly at the intersection of Strickland and Brougham Sts.

When we were first discussing cycleways 8 years ago on Newstalk ZB, most residents, including myself, were overwhelmingly positive. We're the flattest city in New Zealand, and it made sense.

But I don't think people envisioned the removal of on-street parks or the reduction of road sizes - and that's where the conversation gets tricky.

The council said there has been plenty of consultation with the public, citing the Papanui Parallel Cycleway from Northlands to the city, as an example of its flexibility.

It made 80 changes, which seems like a strange gloat. Shouldn't the highly paid city planners have got it right the first time?

I admire people who are passionate, and the cycling lobby group do an outstanding job mobilising members to make oral submissions.

The mayor told me it was important for people to engage in the process. She's right. But what about those, the majority, who didn't want the council to donate $10 million to one of the richest landlords in the city, the Anglican Church - but the council did so anyway.

What about the majority who didn't want rate increases last year during one of the toughest economic periods the country has seen in recent years, but the council went ahead and increased the rates by even more than what it initially announced.

I'll say it again, cycleways are not a problem, but the way in which some council staff make decisions and communicate to the community must change.

They need to take the public with them. Just last year a popular florist on Edgeware Rd was left in tears after finding out the council was going to remove all nearby on-street car parking.

The first she knew about it was when a Fulton Hogan contractor told her on the same day they were to start digging up the road.

It's commendable that Mayor Lianne Dalziel has promised to meet a concerned business owner.

But if the latest plan was so good, she wouldn't need to in the first place.

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Chris Lynch: Utopian thinking doesn't need to destroy small business - New Zealand Herald

The Utah Telecommunications Open Infrastructure Agency, or UTOPIA, has had a helpful push from the COVID-19 pandemic and is keeping crews busy installing fiber optics conduit and cable.

We are a fiber state, said Kimberly McKinley, chief marketing officer. Most cities are connected.

UTOPIA provides high-speed fiber-optic networks to partner cities along the Wasatch Front. Orem is one of those cities, and a legacy partner.

McKinley added that even rural places in Utah, like Morgan, which is completely built out with UTOPIA fiber optics, has some of the best connectivity in the country.

Connectivity has been going on much longer than the pandemic, but the desire for open infrastructure fiber optics is at a high demand as people continue to work and do school from home.

As we come out of the pandemic you wont see people automatically changing, McKinley said. The demand for fiber optics will be more.

McKinley said UTOPIA currently has a list of 20 Utah cities that are contemplating the feasibility of putting fiber optics in the ground.

One of the great things, thanks in part to COVID-19, is the fact that UTOPIA/UIA has the revenue stream to get the final funding to complete the original cities buildout without having to go back to the cities for more money, according to McKinley.

For many years naysayers have said comparing fiber optics to, say, electricity is not sound. Now, communities see fiber as a utility and as a necessity, McKinley said.

The cities who started this so long ago are considered visionary now, McKinley said.

With that growing desire, installation crews are keeping busy.

Over the course of the last year we have been working day and night, said Bob Knight, UTOPIA spokesman.

Knight said that in 2020 crews have laid 1.7 million feet of conduit and 1.4 million feet of cable.

There is no other network in the U.S. that has laid this much fiber, Knight said. UTOPIA is the industry leader across the country.

As of the end of the year, UTOPIA had 35,000 customers in its network.

While many cities dont have fiber to their homes, McKinley said UTOPIA has business class services to more than 50 cities.

2020 was an anomaly, McKinley said. Our biggest year could be 2021. This is new normal and it is giving us tremendous growth.

The pandemic exacerbated trends and changed growth trajectories, according to McKinley. But that is not a bad thing for UTOPIA. McKinley says more providers are calling them.

UTOPIA, a joint agreement originally with 16 cities, began in 2004. It went south for a few years but rebounded in 2015 under new leadership. UTOPIA has been moving in a positive direction ever since.

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UTOPIA crews working day and night to accommodate requests - Daily Herald