Category: Worldwide

Most of us don’t think of a bird as a cuddly pet, but Swoop the snuggly magpie didn’t care what humans think. After he was rescued by New Zealander Matt Owens, the baby bird became a beloved part of the family—the family being Owens and his cat, Mowgli.

“It was just sitting there bleeding, sort of unable to walk properly and it looked like it had been abandoned by its mum so I just picked it up and decided to take it home,” Owens told Newshub. The timing of finding Swoop couldn’t have been better. Owens’ dad had just been diagnosed with terminal cancer, and the bond he formed taking care of Swoop gave Owens an extra dose of love and comfort.

Mowgli wasn’t sure about the new family member at first, but soon took to Swoop and the two became fur-feather friends. The Dodo recently shared a video on Facebook highlighting Owens, Swoop, and Mowgli’s story, and it’s unbelievably adorable.

There’s more to the story, though. Owens documented Swoop and Mowgli’s story on Instagram, and in February, he posted an update on Swoop’s life:

“When I found wee swoop as an injured baby and decided to raise him/her. I always had the intention of getting him/her healthy and capable of looking after him/herself in the wild. It seems that time has finally arrived. Swoop came to me when I found out about my dads illness and Ironically now dad has left us, swoop has also decided to leave the nest, I’m sure he/she will be out the with a new family or partner and I’m sure he/she will be back one day. Maybe with babies :O What an amazing experience it has been looking after this beautiful creature that bought me so much joy at a time I needed it the most. Ill miss ya buddy ❤️ I’ll continue to post memories from time to time for all you swoop lovers out there. 🙂 love, Dad.”

Owens has since adopted another bird named Niwa. He does still share photos of Mowgli and Swoop, though, as fond memories.

How sweet is this?

And this?

Come on…

You never know when life will bring you exactly what you need, whether you’re a man or a bird or a cat. Best wishes to Scoop in his/her new life beyond the Owens nest. And thanks for sharing your sweet little family and giving us all the uplifting dose of sweetness we could all use right now.

Bill Gates has always been passionate about providing vaccines to the parts of the world that lack resources. On Friday he came through again by announcing that the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation is committing $150 million toward efforts to develop and distribute a low cost COVID-19 vaccine to some of the poorer countries of the world.

According to Vox, this latest financial commitment brings the total Gates has dedicated to the pandemic to around $500 million. He is hoping the funds will keep vaccine costs down to increase accessibility beyond just the wealthier populations. As Gates told Bloomberg, “We’re trying to make sure we can end it not just in the rich countries.” Gates is working with the Serum Institute, which is the most prolific vaccine producer in the world, to make $100 million doses that would not exceed $3. In general, companies producing the vaccine have agreed to keep the profit margin low.”

The affordability will also be influenced by which vaccines prove to be the most effective. There are over 100 vaccines being developed worldwide, and 28 have made it to human trials. The cost will be hire if companies like Moderna and Pfizer provide the best solution, as they are developing RNA vaccines, which typically cost more to produce.

In an interview with WIRED, Gates said, “Because of the way you manufacture them, and the difficulty of scaling up, they are more likely — if they are helpful — to help in the rich countries. They won’t be the low-cost, scalable solution for the world at large.” There are pharmaceutical companies like Johnson & Johnson, AstraZeneca and Novavax that are pursuing a more affordable solution so that it would be available to a wider range of economic demographics. He says, “Those are the ones most scalable and low-cost.”

The Gates Foundation is also heavily involved in GAVI, a worldwide vaccine alliance, by pledging $1.6 billion dollars to the organization over the next five years. This is on top of the $4 billion has given to GAVI over the past few decades.

Not only is Bill Gates using his fortune to help contain the pandemic, he has also been very outspoken interviewing for what seems to be every news outlet there is. One of his concerns is the involvement from the United States regarding the global scale of the pandemic. He has spoken with multiple high ranking officials in the White House, but the U.S. has yet to show up to any of the GAVI meetings. Gates is hoping this is not a sign of “vaccine nationalism,” which is if a country hoards vaccines that could be used to help other parts of the world. It is not so far fetched if you recall how cutthroat people were about toilet paper not too long ago.

With all the time, money and effort Bill Gates is putting into helping the world recover from COVID-19, in the grand scale of things wearing a mask doesn’t seem like that much of a sacrifice. Even if you are one of the people who think the whole thing is a hoax or a conspiracy, wear the mask anyway just in the off chance all those doctors and scientists know what they are talking about.

The namesake of Jimmy Kimmel Live! was out on Tuesday night’s show, and his replacement was one of the break-out stars of the quarantine: Sarah Cooper, the author and comedian who’s become a celebrity for uploading videos to social media of her lip synching along to World War-confuser Donald J. Trump. It’s a very simple schtick, and she’s extremely good at it, using mannerisms to bring out sides of the president we haven’t seen before. While she did most of her opening monologue in her own voice, talking about her own life, there was no way she wouldn’t bust out the thing that’s made her a star.

Cooper spent most of her opening talking about herself, by herself, alone without a crowd. She spoke about her Jamaican family, overcoming stereotypes, and her stint working at Google. (“They didn’t know I was black,” she said. “I think they thought I was Indian because they kept promoting me.” She said her dad pointed out she is Indian, being of West Indian descent.)

But eventually Cooper got around to busting out her Trump talk, which she did via rope-a-dope: She said she asked her million-and-a-half followers to send in video questions for her, about her life. She wound up answering them in the voice of Trump, including treating one person to his infamous “What a stupid question” bit you’ll be seeing a lot over the next 80-some days.

You can watch Cooper’s monologue in the video above. The Trump bit starts around the 5:40 mark.

Last summer, Genius Media accused Google of allegedly plagiarizing the website’s song lyrics for their own benefit. Genius chief strategy officer Ben Gross told The Wall Street Journal that prior to the accusation, the company had “shown Google irrefutable evidence again and again that they are displaying lyrics copied from Genius.” How did they find out? According to the company, their lyric sheets are watermarked, featuring a combination of quotation marks that can be converted to Morse code. In response to the accusation, Google explained their process of obtaining song lyrics: “We pay music publishers for the right to display lyrics, since they manage the rights to these lyrics on behalf of the songwriters.”

The lawsuit Genius filed in December sought at least $50 million in damages from Google and LyricFind for “misappropriating content from Genius’s website,” which they used “for [Google’s] own financial benefit and Genius’s financial detriment.” More than a year after the initial accusation, a New York judge opted to dismiss Genius’ lawsuit, according to Variety.

The decision was based on the grounds that Genius does not own the copyright or rights to the original lyrics, with the judge saying the company is not in the position to sue Google for plagiarizing their lyrics. “The case law is clear that only the original copyright owner has exclusive rights to authorize derivative works,” the judge reportedly wrote in their decision. The judge also said Genius failed to “allege breach of contract claims that are qualitatively different from federal copyright claims.” As a result, the judge dismissed the lawsuit for “failure to state a claim” and denied the company’s motion to escalate the case to a state court.

It’s hard to imagine now, but there was a time — in the early aughts, circa his brief, largely CGI turn in The Mummy Returns — when it seemed far-fetched that Dwayne Johnson, once upon a time a popular wrestler mostly referred to as The Rock, would cross over into movies. But crossover he did, and at this point it’s hard to imagine blockbusters without him. In fact, he’s so big that Forbes named him the highest paid actor in the world for the second year running — a feat he’s achieved before that, too.

Who beat the sometime Luke Hobbs back in 2018? George Clooney, who made $239 million, albeit not from movies; much of that was his share of the $1 billion purchase of his booze line, Casamigos Tequila. Johnson came in second, with $124 million. (These lists compile total earnings, including non-acting gigs.)

But much has changed in the last two years. (Boy, have they.) Johnson is on top of the list, albeit with a smaller total: $87.5 million, about a third of that from the $23.5 million paycheck who received from Netflix for their forthcoming movie Red Notice. Last year, Johnson made about the same amount — some $89.4 million. Each year’s Forbes list tallies from June 1 of the previous year to June 1 of the next.

Johnson’s career finds him mixing franchises, such as the Fast and/or Furious series (including the spin-off Hobbs & Shaw) and the relatively new Jumanji, with solo one-offs, like Skyscraper and Rampage. He also appeared as himself in the wrestling bio-comedy Fighting with My Family.

As for Johnson’s closest competition, that would be Ryan Reynolds, with $71.5 million, having nabbed $20 million apiece for two Netflix ventures: Michael Bay’s Six Underground and — wouldn’t you know? — Red Notice, opposite Johnson, who got a slightly higher paycheck. Mark Wahlberg is third, with $58 million, Ben Affleck fourth, with $55 million, and Johnson’s occasional co-star Vin Diesel with $54 million.

The top ten is rounded out by Bollywood star Akshay Kumar at number 6 with $48.5 million; Lin-Manuel Miranda, making his Forbes debut at number 7 with $45.5 milion; Will Smith at 8 with $44.5 million; Adam Sandler at 9 with $41 million; and, last but certainly not least, the legendary Jackie Chan, with $40 million. Congrats, gentlemen — and of course, the ones making the most money in this industry are all men.

You can see Forbes’ entire list here.

On Tuesday, the Milwaukee Bucks entered the evening with very little to play for against the Washington Wizards. However, Giannis Antetokounmpo returned from a one-game absence, presumably to stay sharp as the playoffs loom. While the NBA MVP favorite stayed on the floor for ten minutes in the first half, Antetokounmpo’s night was cut short, not by a team decision to rest him, but by an official’s choice to eject him after he delivered a headbutt to Wizards big man Moe Wagner.

In the ten minutes before Antetokounmpo was ejected, he produced 12 points and nine rebounds. Obviously, those are strong numbers and, in terms of basketball, he looked more than fine. Still, this wasn’t ideal from Antetokounmpo, who didn’t even make it to halftime before garnering the Flagrant 2 and the ensuing automatic ejection.

Going back to Michigan, Wagner does have a reputation as something of an instigator and that could have been the case here. At the same time, it isn’t often that you see a superstar ejected for this kind of thing and, while the overall impact of Antetokounmpo’s early exit is quite low, it was a bit strange. Still, the Bucks have only one more game after Tuesday night — a tilt against Memphis that is gigantic for the Grizzlies in the Western Conference playoff race — and perhaps Antetokounmpo is simply ready for the playoffs to arrive.

Blackpink has spent much of the summer orchestrating their massive comeback, starting with their June single, “How You Like That.” That song arrived more than a year after their 2019 single, “Kill This Love,” and its video garnered over 25 million views in the first five hours alone, and nearly 100 million viewers in its first day. More than a month after the song’s release and performance on The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon, the group returns with another highly-anticipated announcement.

For the last week, Blackpink has let fans throw out various names with whom they should collaborate on their next single. The group finally revealed that artist, and it’s no less than Selena Gomez. What’s more, the group confirmed in their Instagram post that the song with arrive on August 28.

The announcement comes after the group revealed their upcoming album will arrive on October 2 via YG Entertainment/Interscope Records. The promotion materials seem to hint that the album will be titled The Album, but the album’s pre-order pages list it as untitled. The project that should complete their comeback, and it will serve as the follow up to their 2018 album, Blackpink in Your Area.

You can check out their announcement in the Instagram post above.

HBO’s Lovecraft Country will blow your expectations away. I really didn’t want to begin a review like that because I realize how hyperbolic it sounds, but after watching the first five episodes, the other options I came up with to start this piece were “!?!” and “batsh*t insane.” That’s not too classy, nor was my slightly revised “batsh*t insane and careening off a cliff but totally worth the dive.” This show will mess with your mind, in a good way, while being both fantastic and fantastical. If your expectations were low, you’ll be pleasantly surprised. If they were high, then you’ll feel vindicated, but not in the way that you’d suspect. It’s overwhelming at times, and messy, mostly intentionally so — especially when between-episode transitions feel so disjointed and tonally jarring that there’s virtually an anthology effect — but it never stops entertaining.

Creator Misha Green, working with Matt Ruff’s 1950s-set dark-fantasy novel as source material, hit a home run here from the opening scene, in which the first African American baseball player pulverizes a monster. That’s the first clue that executive producers Jordan Peele (his “post-apocalyptic Jackie Robinson” line from Key & Peele unavoidably comes to mind here, as does his horror-visionary status) and J.J. Abrams (representing the sci-fi-geek contingent) are onboard. Even though that first scene is a dream, it sets up the viewer for every non-dream scene that follows. We meet Jonathan Majors as Atticus, a Black Korean War vet returning to Chicago after risking his life for a country that hates him. He’s diving through reality-based horrors of the trenches before encountering UFOs and dodging otherworldly creatures. The black-and-white visuals clash with technicolor gore. It’s difficult to tell which horrors present more danger, and yep, that’s exactly the vibe throughout every episode that follows.

Let’s get slightly more detailed here about expectations. I’m pretty sure that no matter how you imagined Lovecraft Country to be, you’ll soon find out that you could not have anticipated much of what goes down. Yes, you may have expected monsters, both literal and figurative, as well as fantastical and grounded in reality, and both are present in this series. There are monsters who stalk the woods and lurk in basements and pull the sheets off unsuspecting sleepers, and also, there’s an even larger, more insidious abomination in displays of systemic racism. The series’ treatment of white supremacy will remind people of Damon Lindelof’s Watchmen, which is a superior show by most standards. Still, Lovecraft Country makes a fine followup and the closest thing we’ll see to a second-season substitute.

There’s a distinct difference between the two shows, even though both put Black inequality and white cruelty on display while subverting genre conventions. Watchmen stands as an ambitious and accomplished series, for which Lindelof painstakingly painted his backdrop with the finest of details. Whereas Lovecraft Country hurls paint onto a canvas by the gallon and haphazardly whips the pulpy splatters into place with a palette knife. The end result in both cases is enjoyable, but I would counter that while Watchmen is clearly the better show, Lovecraft is the gutsier one. In fact, its ambition and audaciousness might make it the most daring TV show of the year.

We should get into this show’s plot a little bit, at least. The series picks up with Atticus returning to his Chicago home base after war. He receives a mysterious letter about his legacy and sets off on a road trip (but this ain’t Green Book) to Ardham, Massachusetts, which — real or unreal? — isn’t on the map. Along for the ride (and to perform rescues) is his childhood friend, Letitia (Jurnee Smollett). They both enjoyed sci-fi back in the day, although Atticus is the most bookish of the pair. His preference for fantasy literature is, tellingly enough, inseparable from his reality because two of his favorite novels happen to be A Princess of Mars by Edgar Rice Burroughs and At the Mountain of Madness from one Howard Phillips Lovecraft. At best, these authors’ works dabble in stereotypes, and at worst, they’re notoriously and blisteringly racist.

It’s a stark lesson. Not even through stories that many consider fantasy are these characters able to escape reality, since those otherworldly realms are propped up by white supremacy. And as we see during the season’s first half, both reality and out-of-this-world moments are filled to the brim with brutality. Throughout, Atticus and Letty encounter abusive, sneering cops who degrade them and seductive, snobby members of an ancient order with agendas. Whether they’re being chased by police in a sundown town or running from ungodly creatures burrowing up through forest floors, it’s all a frightening reinforcement that Black history and horror are often interchangeable terms.

It’s madness, all of it, while the performances are across-the-board fantastic. Granted, Majors’ (Da 5 Bloods) powerful take on the steady leading man is the least surprising thing about this show. The true revelation would be Smollett (who worked with Green in Underground and was the most impressive part of Birds Of Prey) as she confidently embodies a spitfire who shall not be stopped (by man, woman, or ghost). She wreaks havoc with a baseball bat at one turn, belts out a song at another, and she’s damn good, alongside convincing turns by Courtney B. Vance and Michael K. Williams as Atticus’ Uncle George and bad dad, respectively. Wunmi Mosaku (giving what can only be described as a layered performance, and we’ll come back to that one day) crushes it as Letty’s half-sister Ruby. On the unsettling side of humanity, look no further than the ultra-blonde Abbey Lee and Jordan Patrick Smith as a mysterious duo.

I’m only scratching the surface because this show should be experienced when it comes to specifics, which all slide sideways with a heady cocktail of horror and sci-fi, but the show also delights in dancing around genres. Likewise, the soundtrack refuses to make up its mind while swerving from Rihanna to Marilyn Manson to Cardi B. while mixing in era-appropriate music like Gil Scott-Heron’s “Whitey on the Moon” and Nina Simone. Get ready, because from the sight of Letty scorching down the road to the call of Cthulhu-esque creatures, this show is no slow burn — it hits you in the face right out of the gate. It’s an astounding piece of television, but I think I’m going to stick with my initial reaction: Lovecraft Country is “batsh*t insane,” but in the greatest way.

HBO’s ‘Lovecraft Country’ premieres on Sunday August 16.

Luka Doncic has attracted a whole lot of eyeballs for what he’s done in the NBA’s Orlando bubble. He’s stuffing the stat sheet for a Dallas Mavericks team that has pretty consistently played in entertaining, high-scoring games, and while it’d be a surprise if they end up winning the championship this year, Doncic is emphatically showing that he can play a major role in turning the Mavs into a contender.

He’s also using the bubble as a chance to work on his leadership skills, which led to a wonderful story from Chris Haynes of TNT. Doncic put together a player outing while the Mavs were in the bubble. The whole team was there without one extremely big exception: Boban Marjanovic. Doncic responded by calling him repeatedly, at which point he learned that the big man is getting into the advertising game.

“Luka called him three or four straight times,” Haynes explained. “Boban finally answered, explaining that he was in the middle of shooting a State Farm commercial.”

Now, it is very nice that Doncic is taking on a leadership role like this and trying to be inclusive with all of his teammates, but the thought of Boban being in commercials is something I am quite excited about. He hits the sweet spot of being incredibly personable and super likable, and I am extremely excited for him to become America’s next great pitchman.

As the NBA’s seeding games wind down in Orlando, not every contest features two teams with incentive to operate at the highest possible level. On Tuesday evening, however, a nationally televised match-up spotlighted a pair of teams with plenty to play for, with Damian Lillard and the Portland Trail Blazers taking on Luka Doncic, Kristaps Porzingis, and the Dallas Mavericks. After 48 entertaining minutes and plenty of drama, Lillard and the Blazers picked up the victory by avoiding a buzzer-beater. As a result, Portland inched closer to a playoff berth.

The Mavs came out of the gates firing on the offensive end of the floor, executing well and utilizing Doncic’s shot-making.

Dallas took an eight-point lead in the first period and, while the Blazers showed immediate signs of fighting back, Porzingis established himself in a hurry. The talented big man produced 16 points in the first quarter; tying his career high in an opening period.

Near the end of the first quarter, though, Portland took control, concluding the period on a 17-3 run to assume the lead.

The Blazers stayed in front for the entire second quarter, thanks in part to the work of Lillard. In the first half, he put up 25 points on 10-for-15 shooting, dominating the action.

Lillard’s quality work helped the Blazers to take an eight-point lead into the locker room, but the Mavericks were ready as play resumed. Dallas hung around early in the second half and, late in the third period, the Mavericks scored ten straight points to reclaim the lead.

As the fourth quarter arrived, tensions were high on both sides, including technical fouls for Doncic, Carmelo Anthony, and Maxi Kleber in a short period of time. While the margin was tight, the Mavericks did open the quarter with a slow-developing 11-2 run, taking their largest lead since the opening minutes.

Almost on cue, Lillard responded and, with more than five minutes remaining, the All-NBA guard reached the 50-point mark for the second straight game.

With the help of a three-pointer by Anthony and a tip-in by Jusuf Nurkic, Portland knotted the score at 117-117 with five minutes to go and the stage was set for a wildly intriguing, pressure-packed stretch run. Both offenses continued to cook, with Doncic pouring in a three-point play (that included the sixth foul for Nurkic) and Lillard answered with a triple.

Then, Kleber and Anthony traded triples, keeping the score tied at 127-127 with two minutes left. Keeping the pace, Porzingis knocked down a three-pointer, setting the stage for a wild connection by Lillard to tie the game with a little help from the rim.

On the ensuing play, Porzingis fouled out on something of a controversial and, after a review to confirm that decision, Lillard found Whiteside for a dunk to take the lead. Doncic then answered by drawing a foul but, after he split his attempts, the Blazers led by one point with 40 seconds to go.

After a rare miss from Lillard, the Mavs had possession with a chance to take the lead, but Trey Burke committed a bizarre offensive foul to negate a bucket in the corner.

Forced to foul, Dallas put CJ McCollum on the free throw line with three seconds to go. The veteran guard, who struggled mightily in the game, buried both and the Mavericks had one more chance to tie the game. After a timeout, Dallas did execute a solid play to engineer a look for Tim Hardaway Jr. but, when it went begging, Portland escaped with a badly-need victory.

Lillard was the story of the night, finishing with 61 points on 17-for-32 from the floor, 9-for-17 from three-point range and a perfect 18-for-18 from the free throw line. For good measure, he added eight assists and five rebounds, while also making history with another 60-point effort.

From a team perspective, this was an enormous win for the Blazers, with Portland now assuming control of the No. 8 seed in the West. The Blazers can now clinch a spot in the play-in tournament with a win over the Nets on Thursday and, if they pick up that victory, Portland would hold a key advantage in forcing their opponent to beat them in back-to-back games.