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In an upset, the deaf family drama “CODA” took top honors at a very unpredictable 28th Screen Actors Guild Awards that also saw wins for the leads of “Squid Game,” the cast of “Ted Lasso” and Will Smith. The ceremony, held Sunday at Barker Hangar in Santa Monica, California, and broadcast on both TNT and TBS, was notably border-breaking, with historic wins for deaf actors, Korean stars and some of Hollywood’s biggest names. It culminated with “CODA,” Sian Heder’s heartwarming Apple TV+ coming-of-age film and Sundance Film Festival sensation, winning best ensemble. “This validates the fact that we, deaf actors, can work just like anybody else. We look forward to more opportunities for deaf actors,” signed Marlee Matlin on stage before teaching the crowd sign language for “I love you.”…

If there is no doctor in the house, Amazon’s Alexa will soon be able to summon one. Amazon and telemedicine provider Teladoc Health are starting a voice-activated virtual care program that lets customers get medical help without picking up their phones. The service, for health issues that aren’t emergencies, will be available around the clock on Amazon’s Echo devices. Customers can tell the voice assistant Alexa that they want to talk to a doctor, and that will prompt a call back on the device from a Teladoc physician. The program, announced this week, marks Amazon’s latest expansion into health care and another push by the retail giant into a form of care that grew rapidly during the COVID-19 pandemic. “Telehealth now is something that patients have gotten used to and…

The Russian TikTok video has it all: a cat, puppies and a pulsing background beat. It’s cute, watchable and hardly seems the stuff of state propaganda. In 2014, Russia flooded the internet with fake accounts pushing disinformation about its takeover of Crimea. Eight years later, experts say Russia is mounting a far more sophisticated effort as it invades Ukraine. Armies of trolls and bots stir up anti-Ukrainian sentiment. State-controlled media outlets look to divide Western audiences. Clever TikTok videos serve up Russian nationalism with a side of humor. The effort amounts to an emerging part of Russia’s war arsenal with the shaping of opinion through orchestrated disinformation fighting alongside actual troops and weapons. In the cat video, a husky puppy identified by a digitally inserted U.S. flag swipes at the…

The messages, videos and photos flying across Twitter, Facebook and Telegram far outnumber the airstrikes raining down on Ukraine. They claim to show Russian fighter jets being shot down or Ukrainians dodging for cover in their own homes. Some are real, horrifying images of this war. Others had been lurking on the internet for years before Russia launched the largest attack on a European country since World War II. The invasion of Ukraine is shaping up to be Europe’s first major armed conflict of the social media age, when the small screen of the smartphone is the dominant tool of communication, carrying with it the peril of an instantaneous spread of dangerous, even deadly, disinformation. TikTok videos, propagandized headlines and tweets pinging out across screens around the world are confusing…

Love Sux Avril Lavigne Avril Lavigne has heralded her seventh studio album Love Sux as a return to her pop-punk roots two decades after her 2002 hit single “Complicated” and debut album Let Go. This comeback is well-timed, too, given how the genre is re-establishing a presence in mainstream music. FIVE FACTS: 1. Lavigne told Entertainment Weekly about making the album: “I really went back to what sounds I originally was influenced by at the beginning of my career.” 2. She started writing material for the album in November 2020, despite lacking a record label at the time. 3. Lavigne has admitted that her previous studio album, 2019’s jazz-influenced Head Above Water, was “deep and heavy”. 4. However, she revealed that she wanted to keep the new album “light and…

Batman, never a day person, is plunged into perpetual night in Matt Reeves’nocturnal, nihilist, neo-noir take on the Caped Crusader. Reeves’three-hour-long“The Batman”includes plenty of action, character introductions, gadgets and other various superhero accoutrement. But it is no extravaganza. This“Batman”is a morose mood piece, soaked in shadow and rage, that has stripped the comic’s archetypes down to abstracted silhouettes and grubbily human characters. If Jim Carrey’s Riddler were to wander into this movie, he would fit in about as well as Bugs Bunny in“Taxi Driver.” Scorsese’s movie, with Travis Bickle sneering at societal collapse, was a prominent influence on Todd Phillips’ muddled “Joker,” but it may be more so for “The Batman,” which likewise rests on the precarious psychology of its DC protagonist. Robert Pattinson’s is a young Batman, relatively new…

America’s newest weather satellite blasted off Tuesday to improve wildfire and flood forecasting across the western half of the country. It’s the replacement for a satellite launched exactly four years ago, which ended up with a cooling line blockage that hindered its main camera. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration said the new model is redesigned to avoid the problem. It will be designated GOES-18 after reaching an equatorial orbit 22,000 miles (36,000 kilometers) up. The first images should come next year, following months of testing. This is the third in a nearly $11.7 billion series of four weather satellites that are among the most advanced ever built; the cost includes 30 years of operation. The first soared in 2016 to track Atlantic hurricanes and other East Coast weather, while…

Google-owned Fitbit has recalled 1 million of its Ionic smartwatches after dozens of users reported burn injuries after the battery overheated. The fitness gadget maker says anyone who bought the $299 watch with the model number FB503 should immediately stop using the product and contact Fitbit for packaging to return it. Customers will receive a full refund and a discount of 40% to purchase certain Fitbit products, the company said. Fitbit received 115 reports of the battery overheating in the U.S., with 78 reports of burn injuries including 2 reports of third-degree burns and four claims of second-degree burns. There were 40 reports of burn injuries internationally. Fitbit, based in San Francisco, introduced the Ionic watches in 2017 and stopped producing them in 2020. Google completed its $2.1 billion acquisition…

As Apple continues its expansion of TV+, a $4.99 per month streaming service, the company is reportedly considering investing in live sports content to attract an entirely new audience. Now reports suggest that live music could also play a role in the future of TV+, giving subscribers even more value for money and helping Apple differentiate in a crowded market. EXPANDING INTO LIVE SPORT Both serious Apple investors and casual fans can agree that Apple TV+ has been a mixed bag thus far. Despite investing billions of dollars into original programming, Apple is yet to compete with the likes of Disney+, Amazon Prime, and Netflix, offering just a handful of original TV shows and movies compared to their catalogs of thousands of shows. And Apple knew it: until recently, the…

Russia has some of the best hackers in the world, but in the early days of the war in Ukraine, its ability to create mayhem through malware hasn’t had much of a noticeable impact. Instead, it’s Ukraine that’s marshalled sympathetic volunteer hackers in an unprecedented collective global effort to make the Kremlin pay for making war on its neighbor. It’s a kind of cyber free-for-all that experts say risks escalating a moment already fraught with extraordinary danger after Russian President Vladimir Putin put his nuclear forces on alert. So far, Ukraine’s internet mostly works, its president still able to rally global support via a smartphone, and its power plants and other critical infrastructure still able to function. The kind of devastating cyberattacks thought likely to accompany a large-scale Russian military…

The Massachusetts Institute of Technology is severing ties with a research university it helped establish more than a decade ago in Russia, citing the country’s“unacceptable military actions”in invading Ukraine. The Cambridge university said it notified the Skolkovo Institute of Science and Technology in Moscow that it was exercising its right to terminate the MIT Skoltech Program. Federal law enforcement officials and foreign policy experts have long voiced concerns about the potential for espionage and technology theft arising from MIT’s partnership with the school, which has close ties to Russian President Vladimir Putin’s government, GBH News reported. “This step is a rejection of the actions of the Russian government in Ukraine,”MIT said in a statement posted on the program website.“We take it with deep regret because of our great respect for…

The King’s Man In the early 20th century, Kingsman – the world’s first independent intelligence agency – is formed by the Duke of Oxford (Ralph Fiennes), while a group of tyrants and criminal masterminds, including Rasputin (Rhys Ifans), plot a mercenary war threatening millions of lives. FIVE FACTS: 1. This is the third installment in the Kingsman action-comedy film series, itself based on the comic book series of the same name by Mark Millar and Dave Gibbons. 2. The King’s Man is a prequel to the previously released Kingsman films Kingsman: The Secret Service (2014) and Kingsman: The Golden Circle (2017). 3. The King’s Man is only the second Matthew Vaughn-directed film – after 2004’s Layer Cake – the director has not co-written with Jane Goldman. 4. The film’s working…

Target will invest up to $5 billion this year in physical stores, remodels, new brands and expanding its online fulfilment as the discounter continues to drive sales growth and differentiate itself from rivals. The plans, announced Tuesday at its annual investor meeting held in New York, include opening 30 new stores, from midsize locations in dense suburban areas to small stores in cities like Charleston, South Carolina. It also plans to remodel 200 of its existing stores, reaching more than half of its 1,900 stores this year. The Minneapolis retailer also aims to roll out brand partnerships including opening 250 more Ulta Beauty shops in its stores, with plans to eventually operate 800 shops. The moves come as Target pushed through headwinds — from congested ports to inflation that’s been…

The launch of a joint Europe-Russia mission to Mars this year is now “very unlikely” due to sanctions linked to the war in Ukraine, the European Space Agency said this week. The agency said after a meeting of officials from its 22 member states that it was assessing the consequences of sanctions for its cooperation with Russia’s Roscosmos space agency. “The sanctions and the wider context make a launch in 2022 very unlikely,” for the Europe-Russia ExoMars rover mission, the agency said in a statement. The launch was already postponed from 2020 due to the coronavirus outbreak and technical problems. It was due to blast off from the Baikonur spaceport in Kazakhstan in September using a Russian Proton rocket. Postponing a launch often means waiting for months or years until…

By itself, being able to read smartphone home screens in Cherokee won’t be enough to safeguard the Indigenous language, endangered after a long history of erasure. But it might be a step toward immersing younger tribal citizens in the language spoken by a dwindling number of their elders. That’s the hope of Principal Chief Richard Sneed of the Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians, who’s counting on more inclusive consumer technology — and the involvement of a major tech company — to help out. Sneed and other Cherokee leaders have spent several months consulting with Lenovoowned Motorola, which last week introduced a Cherokee language interface on its newest line of phones. Now phone users will be able to find apps and toggle settings using the syllable-based written form of the language…

As Russia’s war in Ukraine plays out for the world on social media, big tech platforms are moving to restrict Russian state media from using their platforms to spread propaganda and misinformation. After the European Union’s president called for a ban on Russian state media, a wave of tech companies blocked the channels from their platforms. Google announced that it’s blocking the YouTube channels of those outlets in Europe“effective immediately”but acknowledged“it’ll take time for our systems to fully ramp up.”Russia’s RT and Sputnik accounts were also disabled in Europe on China’s TikTok, a video-sharing platform, a company spokesperson confirmed. The actions followed Meta’s announcement that it would bar the state media from its platforms, Instagram and Facebook. Tech companies have also offered more modest changes in other parts of the…

Apple said it has paused all product sales in Russia in response to the Russian invasion of Ukraine. “We are deeply concerned about the Russian invasion of Ukraine and stand with all of the people who are suffering as a result of the violence,” Apple said in a statement. “We are supporting humanitarian efforts, providing aid for the unfolding refugee crisis, and doing all we can to support our teams in the region.” The company outlined a number of actions in response to the invasion, including stopping all exports into its sales channels in the country. Apple Pay and other services have been limited, the company said. The Russian state media, RT News and Sputnik News, are no longer available for download from the Apple Store outside Russia. Users in…

Ford will split its electric vehicle and internal combustion operations into two individual businesses to accelerate its adaptation of new technology and the Detroit automaker said that its transformation into an EV company is accelerating. Ford plans a major restructuring with two distinct but strategically interdependent auto businesses – Ford Blue focusing on traditional combustion engines and Ford Model e, which will develop electric vehicles. Jim Farley, the chief executive officer of Ford Motor Co., will lead the electric division. Speaking candidly last week at an investment conference, he said that Ford did not want to completely break off its electric division, but that changes were coming. “We are going all in, creating separate but complementary businesses that give us start-up speed and unbridled innovation in Ford Model e together…

Schoolchildren in California, Oregon and Washington will no longer be required to wear masks as part of new indoor mask policies the Democratic governors of all three states announced jointly this week. “With declining case rates and hospitalizations across the West, California, Oregon and Washington are moving together to update their masking guidance,” the governors said in a statement. The new guidance will make face coverings a recommendation rather than a requirement at most indoor places in California and at schools on March 12, regardless of vaccination status. In Washington and Oregon, all the requirements will lift on March 12. Federal mask requirements will still apply in high-risk indoor settings such as public transportation, airports and taxis. Rules for other high-risk indoor settings could also vary by state. The milestone,…

For the athletes at the 2022 Winter Olympics in Beijing, travel entailed … robots. Everywhere. These machines prepared and served noodles, rice and burgers, and roamed hallways to take the temperatures of passersby. They even passed the Olympic flame underwater. Yet even if you’re not an Olympian, your travels these days are far more likely to involve technology that you’ve never used before. Many of these technological advancements were spurred by early pandemic pressure for contactless payments, food service and more. For example, between February and March 2020 alone, Mastercard saw the number of contactless payments at grocery stores grow twice as fast as non-contactless transactions. Meanwhile, the number of active restaurants on the Uber Eats food delivery app grew by over 75% between Dec. 31, 2019, and Dec. 31,…

The U.S. Pacific Northwest was in the throes of a record-shattering heat wave last summer when a woman in her 70s was wheeled into an emergency room with symptoms of a life-threatening heat stroke. Desperate to cool her, Dr. Alexander St. John grabbed a body bag, filled it with ice from the hospital kitchen and zipped the woman inside. Within minutes, her body temperature dropped and her symptoms improved. “I’ve never had to do that before. It was surreal,” said St. John.“Twenty years ago, it seems like we would talk about climate change as something that would happen over the coming generations — and all of a sudden it seems to be accelerating to the point where we’re all experiencing it in real time.” The technique was used to save…