AFP in Ottawa: Justin Trudeau admits failure to uphold French language during pandemic (The Guardian)
French has become a collateral victim of the coronavirus pandemic in Canada, forcing the prime minister, Justin Trudeau, to defend failures to uphold laws requiring labels and services in both official languages. Canada is officially bilingual, but the government has allowed the sale of imported disinfectants labelled only in English because of "the extreme situation in which we find ourselves", Trudeau said […].
Regarded as a tomboy and known by the nickname Fike, she was born Princess Sophie Friederike Auguste von Anhalt-Zerbst-Dornburg in Prussia. By what name is she more historically known?
Catherine II (2 May 1729 - 17 November 1796), most commonly known as Catherine the Great, was empress of Russia from 1762 until 1796-the country's longest-ruling female leader. She came to power following a coup d'état that she organised-resulting in her husband, Peter III, being overthrown. Under her reign, Russia was revitalised; it grew larger and stronger, and was recognised as one of the great powers of Europe and Asia.
Catherine was born in Alt-Stettin, Pomerania, Kingdom of Prussia (now Szczecin, Poland) as Princess Sophie Friederike Auguste von Anhalt-Zerbst-Dornburg. Her father, Christian August, Prince of Anhalt-Zerbst, belonged to the ruling German family of Anhalt but held the rank of a Prussian general in his capacity as governor of the city of Stettin. Two of her first cousins became Kings of Sweden: Gustav III and Charles XIII. In accordance with the custom then prevailing in the ruling dynasties of Germany, she received her education chiefly from a French governess and from tutors. Catherine was regarded as a tomboy and was known by the nickname Fike.
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Mark. was first, and correct, with:
Catherine the Great.
Randall wrote:
Catherine the Great
Alan J answered:
Catherine the Great.
mj said:
A woman of many accomplishments
Catherine the Great.
Dave responded:
Catherine the Great. During that period of time the ruling family of Russia was German. 6 months after her despised husband, Peter III, succeeded to the throne, Catherine and her lover deposed Peter by a coup, and forced him to abdicate. Soon after she became a widow when the 34 year old Peter III suddenly died in custody, officially of natural causes, but presumably murdered on Catherine's orders.
Photos: Empress Catherine took many lovers, bore children out of wedlock, and her lewd taste in furniture gave her a almost unequalled reputation for lasciviousness. But the legend that she was crushed to death at age 67 while having sex with a stallion, because the special harness suspending the horse broke, is false.
Cal in Vermont replied:
Catherine The Great.
Mac Mac said:
Catherine the Great
zorch wrote:
Catherine the Great, Empress of Russia.
Jim from CA, retired to ID, responded:
Catherine the Great
Daniel in The City replied:
Catherine the Great
Billy in Cypress U$A said:
Wiki says she is Catherine the Great.
Barbara, of Peppy Tech fame wrote:
The answer is Catherine the Great.
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• Actor Will Smith started out as a well-respected Philadelphia rapper. He wrote his own lyrics, and sometimes he used profanity in those lyrics. However, one day his grandmother read a page of lyrics he had written, and across the top of the page she wrote, "Dear Willard, intelligent people do not use these words to express themselves." After that experience, he wrote lyrics without profanity.
• Choreographer George Balanchine's English was not perfect. He once played a game of Charades in which he gave the clues for "composer" and "three syllables." The contestants guessed Beethoven, Bellini, Hindemith, Mendelssohn, Tchaikovsky, and Vivaldi. Unfortunately, none of these was the correct answer, which Mr. Balanchine said was "Mo-tz-art."
• Daniel Purcell - the brother of the composer Henry Purcell - was known for his puns. One day, he was challenged to make a pun. He asked, "On what subject?" The reply came back, "The King." Mr. Purcell responded, "The King is not a subject."
Media
• Punk rocker Patti Smith occasionally acted badly. Her second album, Radio Ethiopia, received mainly mediocre and bad reviews, and that put her on the defensive. At a press conference in London, a music reporter asked her why tickets for her tour weren't selling. She screamed, "F**k you! You're a rag! Get out of here!" She also took food from a plate and threw it. Next she was asked, "Which Beatle newsreel are you acting now?" She responded by climbing on a table and kicking away any objects that were on it. She then told everyone, "I'm the field marshal of rock 'n' roll! I'm f**king declaring war! My guitar is my machine gun!" One of the journalists present was Julie Burchill, a young fan of Ms. Smith's. She was horrified and in tears because of Ms. Smith's actions. Later, Ms. Burchill wrote, "For a two-year-old it would have been a very impressive performance; from the Queen of Rock and Roll it was like watching God j*rk off."
• In 1991, Tim Perlich wanted to interview Canadian jazz musician Oscar Peterson for a cover story in Now Magazine; however, Mr. Peterson checked him out first, telephoning him to ask, "What's your interest in talking to me?" Mr. Perlich replied that he was impressed that Mr. Peterson had kept on playing and recording with the piano although many other jazz artists had long ago switched to electronic keyboards. This was good enough for Mr. Perlich to be invited to Mr. Peterson's home for an interview, which was held in the basement den. Mr. Perlich expected to see many awards there and he was shocked to see many synthesizers instead. Mr. Peterson told him, "Shhhhhh! A man needs his toys."
• Not every reporter knows much about music, even when assigned to write an article about musicians. When the Beatles first came to the United States, an American reporter asked what they most wanted to see. The Beatles replied, "Muddy Waters and Bo Diddley." Surprised by the answer, the reporter asked, "Where's that?"
• Sometimes a singer-songwriter will have a long wait between albums. When a reporter for MTV asked Tom Waits why six years had passed before he recorded a new album, he replied, "I was stuck in traffic."
CBS opens the night with a FRESH'TPIR', followed by a RERUN'The Neighborhood', then a RERUN'Bob Hearts Abishola', followed by a RERUN'Bull'.
Scheduled on a FRESHStephen Colbert are Jake Tapper and Tame Impala.
Scheduled on a FRESHJames Corden, OBE, are Nicholas Hoult, Lior Suchard, and Sam Fischer.
NBC begins the night with a FRESH'The Voice', followed by a FRESH'Sugarland'.
Scheduled on a FRESHJimmy Fallon are Seth MacFarlane, David Chang, and Lady Antebellum.
Scheduled on a FRESHSeth Meyers is Tina Fey.
On a RERUNLilly Singh (from 4/1/20) is Terry Crews.
ABC starts the night with a FRESH'The Bachelor', followed by a FRESH'The Baker & The Beauty'.
Scheduled on a FRESHJimmy Kimmel is Adam Sandler.
The CW offers a FRESH'Whose Line Is It Anyway?', followed by a RERUN'Whose Line Is It Anyway?', then a FRESH'Roswell, New Mexico'.
Faux has a FRESH'9-1-1', followed by a RERUN'9-1-1'.
MY recycles an old 'L&O: SVU', followed by another old 'L&O: SVU'.
AMC offers the movie 'The Karate Kid, Part II', followed by the movie 'Beetlejuice', then a FRESH'Creepshow'.
BBC -
[6:00AM] STAR TREK: DEEP SPACE NINE - Profit and Lace
[7:00AM] STAR TREK: DEEP SPACE NINE - Time's Orphan
[8:00AM] STAR TREK: DEEP SPACE NINE - The Sound of Her Voice
[9:00AM] STAR TREK: DEEP SPACE NINE - Tears of the Prophets
[10:00AM] STAR TREK: DEEP SPACE NINE - Image in the Sand
[11:00AM] STAR TREK: DEEP SPACE NINE - Shadows and Symbols
[12:00PM] STAR TREK: DEEP SPACE NINE - Afterimage
[1:00PM] STAR TREK: DEEP SPACE NINE - Take Me Out to the Holosuite
[2:00PM] STAR TREK: DEEP SPACE NINE - Chrysalis
[3:00PM] STAR TREK: DEEP SPACE NINE - Treachery, Faith and the Great River
[4:00PM] STAR TREK: DEEP SPACE NINE - Once More Unto the Breach
[5:00PM] STAR TREK: DEEP SPACE NINE - The Siege of AR-558
[6:00PM] YOUNG GUNS
[8:30PM] YOUNG GUNS II
[11:00PM] YOUNG GUNS
[1:30AM] YOUNG GUNS II
[4:00AM] STAR TREK: DEEP SPACE NINE - Image in the Sand
[5:00AM] STAR TREK: DEEP SPACE NINE - Shadows and Symbols (ALL TIMES EST)
Bravo has 'Below Deck Sailing Yacht', another 'Below Deck Sailing Yacht', followed by a FRESH'Below Deck Sailing Yacht', then a FRESH'Camp Getaway', followed by a FRESH'Watch What Happens Live'.
FX has the movie 'Ride Along', followed by the movie 'Ride Along 2'.
History has 'American Pickers', another 'American Pickers', followed by a FRESH'American Pickers', then a FRESH'Pawn Stars'.
IFC -
[6:00A] Mommie Dearest
[9:00A] Sleepy Hollow
[11:30A] Halloween
[2:00P] That '70s Show
[2:30P] That '70s Show
[3:00P] That '70s Show
[3:30P] That '70s Show
[4:00P] That '70s Show
[4:30P] That '70s Show
[5:00P] That '70s Show
[5:30P] That '70s Show
[6:00P] Two and a Half Men
[6:30P] Two and a Half Men
[7:00P] Two and a Half Men
[7:30P] Two and a Half Men
[8:00P] Two and a Half Men
[8:30P] Two and a Half Men
[9:00P] Two and a Half Men
[9:30P] Two and a Half Men
[10:00P] Two and a Half Men
[10:30P] Two and a Half Men
[11:00P] Two and a Half Men
[11:30P] Two and a Half Men
[12:00A] Two and a Half Men
[12:30A] Two and a Half Men
[1:00A] That '70s Show
[1:30A] That '70s Show
[2:00A] That '70s Show
[2:30A] That '70s Show
[3:00A] That '70s Show
[3:30A] That '70s Show
[4:00A] That '70s Show
[4:30A] That '70s Show
[5:00A] That '70s Show
[5:30A] That '70s Show (ALL TIMES EST)
Bono celebrated his 60th birthday Sunday by posting a playlist of what he described as "60 Songs That Saved My Life," with the promise to write a "fan letter" to all 60 artists. He posted the first six of these 60 mash notes on the U2 website, kicking off with his praise for Billie Eilish, David Bowie, Kraftwerk, Daft Punk, Luciano Pavarotti and Massive Attack.
His list of 60 life-savers includes the artists you'd most expect, such as Nick Cave, Bob Dylan, Lou Reed, Patti Smith, Johnny Cash, Elvis Presley, the Clash, Van Morrison and Johnny Cash. It also includes a few more recent or pop-oriented songs that might not be as predictable from a rock-hero-honoring statesman, like Coldplay's "Clocks," Madonna's "Ray of Light," Lady Gaga's "Born This Way," the Bee Gees' "Immortality" and even Peter Frampton's "Show Me the Way."
"These are some of the songs that saved my life," the singer writes. "The ones I couldn't have lived without… the ones that got me from there to here, zero to 60… through all the scrapes, all manner of nuisance, from the serious to the silly… and the joy, mostly joy." He adds, "I am writing a fan letter to accompany each song to try and explain my fascination." The gallery of letters to his heroes will expand over the coming days on U2's website.
Bono's full list of "60 Songs That Saved My Life": Bono
The Cannes Film Festival will unveil a selection of movies in early June and collaborate with several festivals, including Venice, to present some films, Variety has confirmed. Organizers also seem to have ruled out the possibility of a physical festival this fall.
"As of today, a physical edition seems complicated to organize, so we are going forward with an announcement of films from the (initial Official) Selection at the beginning of June," said a spokesperson for the festival, confirming what Cannes' director Thierry Fremaux said on Sunday in an interview with Screen Daily.
Rather than opting for a virtual festival, Cannes will be organizing a "redeployment 'outside the walls' (of Cannes), in collaboration with fall festivals," said the spokesperson. This includes Venice, as previously reported by Variety, and with whom talks have begun, as well as cinemas.
The Cannes chief, who is a fervent supporter of movie theaters, has vowed to help exhibitors lure back moviegoers this fall. "The cinema and its industries are threatened. We will have to rebuild, affirm again its importance with energy, unity and solidarity," Fremaux told Variety in April.
Over the weekend, Fremaux said that instead of unveiling the whole of what should have been this year's Official Selection - including out of competition and Un Certain Regard - he will only announce a list of movies that were part of the roster and scheduled to be released in theaters between now and next spring. These films will be given a 'Cannes 2020' label. The selection process for next year's festival, meanwhile, will start in the fall. Some movies that were selected for this edition and have delayed their release by a year will be considered for the 2021 edition.
Devastated after her graduate recital was canceled due to coronavirus concerns, Brooke Mead nearly gave up. Faced with recording the concert alone, at home, the 23-year-old viola student stopped practicing altogether.
But then, the music took an amazing turn.
After seeking out advice in an online question-and-answer session with the Philadelphia Orchestra, she was invited to perform her recital on the renowned body's live webcast as the lead-in to a rebroadcast of one of its performances.
That allowed her to reach hundreds of classical music fans around the world who otherwise wouldn't have gotten to hear her play, had her performance gone on as originally planned at Temple University's Philadelphia campus.
In the online session, Mead asked the orchestra's assistant principal cellist, Yumi Kendall, how she should deal with her disappointment. Mead had done intern-level work for the orchestra from September to March, and Kendall recognized her name.
America Ferrera welcomed a daughter just in time for Mother's Day!
The actress and producer announced the birth of Lucia Marisol Williams, who was born on May 4, with a special photo via Instagram on Sunday.
"LUCIA MARISOL WILLIAMS arrived on May 4th to give me my Mother's Day hugs and kisses herself. Mama, Dada & Big Brother are over the moon to welcome her bright light to our family."
Ferrera and her husband Ryan Piers Williams are already parents to Sebastian Piers Williams, who was born in 2018.
On a dusty plaza in a Native American village that dates back nearly a millennium, a steady trickle of vehicles inched through a pop-up coronavirus testing site.
From the bed of a pickup truck and backseats of cars, wide-eyed children stared from behind hand-sewn masks and then sobbed as testing crews in hospital gowns swabbed their noses. The workers packed the samples into a plastic travel cooler for a return trip past the tribe's guarded roadblock to a state lab.
The mandatory testing - under the threat of fines by the tribal council in Picuris Pueblo - was being performed by the state Health Department and U.S. Indian Health Service as they strive to identify potential infection hot spots and contain the virus that's ravaged other Native American communities. The order covered everyone from visiting construction workers and homebound seniors to the clerks at the pueblo's sole general store, where candy, jerky, liquor and cigarettes are now sold only through a slot in the front door.
Small Native American pueblos across New Mexico are embracing extraordinary isolation measures that turn away outsiders as well as near-universal testing to try to insulate themselves from a contagion with frightening echoes of the past.
A hundred miles (160 kilometers) west, the coronavirus has rampaged across the vast Navajo Nation, one the most populous tribes in the U.S. whose boundaries extend from northwestern New Mexico through portions of Arizona and Utah. That outbreak has public health officials concerned that Native American communities may be especially susceptible to the pandemic because of underlying health issues, including high rates of diabetes, obesity and heart disease.
New Mexico's 19 indigenous pueblos - communities that range from several thousand members to just 300 - view the coronavirus as an existential threat after early infections raced through San Felipe and Zia pueblos, propagated in one instance by people attending a funeral.
A loss of snow and ice on Earth's highest mountain peaks could be driving dangerous changes in the food chains of distant coastal water, according to new research.
Like a gardener turning over soil, cold winter winds blowing down from the Himalayan mountains are known to fertilise the Arabian sea by chilling the surface and causing the dense waters to sink, only to be replaced with fresh currents rich in nutrients.
Due to climate change, however, winter monsoons are rapidly becoming warmer and moister, leaving marine habitats with less oxygen and nutrients, and allowing microbes that thrive in an oxygen-depleted wasteland to bloom instead.
Recently, it's gotten so bad, the thick green swirls of algal blooms can actually be seen from space.
The gutted carcass of a freshwater dolphin has been found in a river sanctuary in Bangladesh, officials said Sunday, sparking fears fishermen are taking advantage of the virus lockdown to poach the endangered creatures.
Locals in the southeastern town of Raojan found the remains of the 62-inch (157-centimetre) long Ganges river dolphin on the banks of the Halda River, fishery department official Abdullah al Mamun told AFP.
It had suffered a sharp and deep incision from its neck to tail and layers of its body fat -- from which oil is extracted for use in traditional medicines -- were missing, he said.
The dolphin is the second to be found dead in the same sanctuary since Bangladesh imposed its lockdown to tackle the coronavirus, said Manzoorul Kibria, coordinator of the Halda River Research Laboratory (HRRL).
Bangladesh prohibits the killing of Ganges dolphins, which are categorised as endangered under the International Union for Conservation of Nature's "Red List" of threatened species.
The coronavirus pandemic has canceled dozens of spring traditions, from college basketball's Final Four to Easter Sunday services, but there's one rite that's going on largely unfettered - turkey hunting.
Every state except Alaska, which is the only state with no turkeys, hosts a spring turkey hunt each year. The birds, whose domesticated cousins grace Thanksgiving tables from Hawaii to Maine, are among America's greatest conservation success stories.
The hunt is taking on a new look in some parts of the country this year due to social distancing laws. Many states, including Maine, are requiring out-of-state residents to self quarantine for two weeks when they enter the state. That functionally eliminates out-of-state hunters from coming to the Pine Tree State to bag a bird.
Other states, including Kansas, have suspended the sale of turkey permits to non-residents to reduce spread of the coronavirus. Some have suspended the need to register a bird after shooting it.
But all 49 states are going ahead with turkey hunts in some form or another, said Mark Hatfield, national director of conservation services for the South Carolina-based National Wild Turkey Federation. That even includes Hawaii, where the birds aren't native but were introduced in the 1960s.
Some truths about the Universe and our experience in it seem immutable. The sky is up. Gravity sucks. Nothing can travel faster than light. Multicellular life needs oxygen to live. Except we might need to rethink that last one.
Earlier this year, scientists discovered that a jellyfish-like parasite doesn't have a mitochondrial genome - the first multicellular organism known to have this absence. That means it doesn't breathe; in fact, it lives its life completely free of oxygen dependency.
A team of researchers led by Dayana Yahalomi of Tel Aviv University in Israel decided to take another look at a common salmon parasite called Henneguya salminicola.
It's a cnidarian, belonging to the same phylum as corals, jellyfish and anemones. Although the cysts it creates in the fish's flesh are unsightly, the parasites are not harmful, and will live with the salmon for its entire life cycle.
Tucked away inside its host, the tiny cnidarian can survive quite hypoxic conditions. But exactly how it does so is difficult to know without looking at the creature's DNA - so that's what the researchers did.
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