At 5pm today, the complete Manhattan section of City Water Tunnel No. 3 became operational, sending drinking water through this colossal piece of subterranean infrastructure—under construction since 1970—for the very first time.
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Source: http://feeds.gawker.com/~r/gizmodo/full/~3/Ual1bUY4lyA/an-artificial-cave-200-beneath-central-park-with-micha-1446538828MEXICO CITY (AP) — A team of Trique Indian boys swept through a youth basketball tournament despite their generally short stature and the fact that most play barefoot, earning acclaim in Mexico and abroad.
The team from the southern Mexico state of Oaxaca won all six of its games to become this year's champions at the International Festival of Mini-Basketball held recently in Argentina.
Other teams in the tournament dubbed the boys the "the barefoot mice from Mexico" because they are smaller than the other competitors, said Ernesto Merino, one of the team's coaches and a Trique Indian. He said they compensate for their short stature with "strength, speed and resistance."
Children are given tennis shoes when they join the team, but many don't wear the sneakers because they are accustomed to going barefoot, Merino said.
Merino said they grow up in large, poor families who struggle to find the money to buy clothes and shoes.
"For them it's normal to not have shoes, to walk barefoot," he said.
The team's performance won it a minute of applause Wednesday on the floor of Mexico's Chamber of Deputies, as well as accolades from basketball experts, among them Horacio Muratore, president of the International Basketball Federation-Americas, which organizes the annual tournament.
"These boys deserved (the championship) more than anyone," Muratore wrote on the organization's website.
The boys' achievement has come at a particularly sensitive time for Mexico, which is agonizing over the poor performance of its once well-regarded national soccer team. The Tri, as it's known, has barely kept its hopes alive for qualifying for next year's World Cup in Brazil.
Merino said the boys who played at the tournament held in Cordoba, Argentina, are part of a basketball program designed to help poor children in Oaxaca, which is one of Mexico's poorest and most marginalized areas. The Oaxaca state government gives them tennis shoes, uniforms and a monthly $46 stipend.
"We see a basketball as an opportunity to grow in life," Merino said.
The program was started three years ago and it currently has 40 children enrolled, including five girls.
To enter the program, children must have good grades in school, speak their native tongue and help with chores at home.
"We want them to be prepared in life," Merino said.
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They were on their way to becoming one of Hollywood's "It" couples, but now it appears Nina Dobrev and Derek Hough have called it quits on their short-lived romance.
According to US Weekly, "The Vampire Diaries" beauty and her dance pro boyfriend ended the relationship after only six weeks due to apparently long distance.
"The distance was too much to handle," a friend of the couple stated.
Although the relationship didn't quite last as long as most would have hoped, the 24-year-old actress still remains close to her ex-boyfriend's sister Julianne Hough.
"Julianne understands - there was no hard feels," another source commented on the two best friends.
The couple became an item in September and were only seen together about two weeks ago while attending the Universal Studios Hollywood Halloween Horror Nights even in Los Angeles.
Does the name Ada Lovelace ring any bells? No? Seeing as you’re reading this on a computer, tablet or smartphone, it should. The Victorian mother-of-three, born 1815, was the world’s first ever computer programmer.
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Source: http://feeds.gawker.com/~r/gizmodo/full/~3/sPfXan3pdTU/the-world-s-first-computer-programmer-was-a-victorian-m-1445503663GENEVA (AP) — Declaring that Iran no longer wants to "walk in the dark" of international isolation, Iranian negotiators put forward what they called a potential breakthrough plan Tuesday at the long-stalled talks on easing fears that Tehran wants atomic arms.
Deputy Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi said the Iranian plan's formal name was "An End to the Unnecessary Crisis and a Beginning for Fresh Horizons." He described it as having many new ideas but added negotiators had agreed to keep the details confidential during the morning bargaining session.
"We think that the proposal we have made has the capacity to make a breakthrough," he told reporters.
Alluding to the international pressure over Iran's nuclear program that has driven the country into near-pariah status, he said: "We no longer want to walk in the dark and uncertainty and have doubts about the future."
Iran's version of a grand bargain is for painful international sanctions to be lifted in exchange for possible concessions it had been previously unwilling to consider, such as increased monitoring and scaling back on uranium enrichment — a potential path to nuclear arms and the centerpiece of the impasse with the West.
A member of one of the delegations meeting with Iran told The Associated Press the plan offered reductions in both the levels of uranium enrichment being conducted by Iran and the number of centrifuges doing the enrichment — both key demands from the six nations with Iran at the negotiating table. He demanded anonymity because he was not authorized to divulge details.
European Union official Michael Mann said Iran's PowerPoint presentation, presented by Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif, lasted about one hour.
The session resumed in mid-afternoon and a U.S. State Department official said the six powers were looking at further details of the Iranian presentation. The official demanded anonymity because she was not authorized to divulge details of the closed meeting.
Iran's uranium enrichment program is at the core of the six world powers' concerns. Iran now has more than 10,000 centrifuges churning out enriched uranium, which can be used either to power reactors or as the fissile core of a nuclear bomb. Iran has long insisted it does not want nuclear arms — a claim the U.S. and its allies have been skeptical about — but has resisted international attempts to verify its aims.
Tehran is now under international sanctions that are biting deeply into its troubled economy. Since the election of reformist Iranian President Hassan Rouhani in June, Iranian officials have said they are ready to compromise.
The U.S, Russia, China, Britain, France and Germany are eager to test whether those words will translate into real progress such as increased international monitoring and scaling back uranium enrichment.
"We have seen some positive mood music coming out of Tehran," Mann said. "But of course the most important thing is that they actually follow it up with concrete proposals that address our concerns."
The first session of the two-day talks — the first since Rouhani's election — lasted about 2 ½ hours, ending shortly after noon. Back pains suffered by Zarif, Iran's chief negotiator, threatened to complicate the process.
Mann said the pains did not stop Zarif from having a "cordial" dinner Monday evening with Catherine Ashton, the top EU diplomat convening the talks. But Araghchi said Zarif was "suffering a lot," although he intended to stay in Geneva until the talks ended.
Iran's state TV, which closely reflects government views, said Tehran offered to discuss uranium enrichment levels. The report also said Iran proposed adopting the additional protocols of the U.N.'s nuclear treaty — effectively opening its nuclear facilities to wider inspection and monitoring — if the West recognizes Iran's right to enrich uranium.
Of the tons of enriched uranium in Iran's stockpile, most is enriched to under 5 percent — a level that need weeks of further enrichment to turn into weapons-level uranium. But it also has nearly 200 kilograms (440 pounds) of 20 percent-enriched uranium, a form that can be quickly upgraded for weapons use, according to the U.N's atomic agency, which keeps tabs on Iran's nuclear activities. That is close to — but still below — what is needed for one nuclear weapon.
No final deal is expected at the two-day session, but it potentially could be the launching pad for a deal that has proven elusive since negotiations began in 2003.
One immediate change from previous talks was the choice of language. Mann told reporters they were being held in English, unlike previous rounds under Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, Rouhani's hard-line predecessor, where Farsi translation was provided.
A former senior U.N. official who has acted as an intermediary between U.S. and Iranian officials said the six powers want significant cuts in the number of Iranian centrifuges now enriching uranium.
They also demand that Iran ship out to another country not only the 20 percent uranium it now has but also most of the tons of low-enriched uranium it has produced. And they want caps on the amount of enriched uranium that Iran could keep at any time. The official spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to comment on the talks.
Iran says it needs this material to power a future reactor network. Iranian state television has quoted Araghchi as saying that Tehran was ready to discuss its enrichment program but would never ship enriched materials abroad.
While seeking to reduce enrichment at Iran's sprawling underground facility at Natanz, the six powers also want Iran to completely close the heavily fortified enrichment plant at Fordo, south of Tehran.
Demands to reduce enrichment instead of stopping it implicitly recognize Iran's right to enrich uranium for peaceful purposes. That already is a victory for Tehran, considering talks began 10 years ago with the international community calling on the Islamic Republic to mothball its enrichment program.
LONDON – Avant-garde U.K. director Ben Charles Edwards' short film Dotty could signal the beginning of a fresh British acting dynasty. The film stars nine-year-old Rudy Law, son of Jude Law and ex-wife Sadie Frost.
Frost and Law junior star alongside each other in Edwards' take on a classic American children's fantasy. Co-written with Dominic Wells, Dotty details the story of a lonely child who stumbles across an old caravan while wandering across the Nevada desert and meets the eccentric old woman of the story's title.
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The short is due to premiere ahead of Dom Hemmingway, the British crime thriller starring Jude Law, at a screening in London on Oct. 20. It will then stream via Ben Charles Edwards site from November 2013.
Shot on location in Nevada, the film is a true family affair, produced by Frost's own banner, Blonde to Black Pictures. She produced the film with Emma Comley and Edwards, with Andrew Green as executive producer.
Edwards said Frost "was teaching Rudy a lot whilst we were on set," describing the filmmaking process as "just charming."
"It was beautiful moments to witness, watching a mum and a son work like that," he added.
Edwards also told THR that Jude Law gave input on the film.
"So it really was a family effort, because the suggestions that Jude made to the edit hugely strengthened the project by helping with the structure -- adding shots, taking them away. Jude really got the balance right."
Frost described the title character as fun. "I love playing characters that are very different from me, where I can completely transform myself. So Dotty is a kooky, eccentric old lady -- I love the way she dances."
Dotty marks Edwards' eighth outing behind the camera. He has also collaborated with artists and talent such as Russian conceptual artist Andrey Bartenev (for a photography exhibit at the Russian Museum of Modern Art), Zandra Rhodes, artist Piers Atkinson, musician and DJ Boy George and the fashion world¹s Giles Deacon at Vogue Italia.
