Author: Happy

Usher has a new confession: The Grammy winner will headline the Super Bowl halftime show in Las Vegas.The NFL, Apple Music and Roc Nation announced Sunday that Usher would lead the halftime festivities from Allegiant Stadium on Feb. 11. The music megastar, who has won eight Grammys, said he’s looking forward to performing on the NFL’s biggest stage.”It’s an honour of a lifetime to finally check a Super Bowl performance off my bucket list,” Usher said in a statement. “I can’t wait to bring the world a show unlike anything else they’ve seen from me before.”Usher launched to superstardom with the…

Engineers in Australia have found a way of making stronger concrete by utilizing coffee grounds, giving the roast a “double shot” at life and reducing waste going to landfills. The RMIT University team developed the technique that makes concrete 30% stronger by adding waste coffee grounds after it is turned into biochar using their “low-energy process”. Globally, 11 million tons of spent coffee is generated annually. Disposing of organic waste poses an environmental challenge because it emits large amounts of greenhouse gases like carbon dioxide and methane, which is 21 times worse than CO2 for the climate. Furthermore, concrete used…

A NASA spacecraft passed by the Earth on Sunday and released its capsule containing rare fragments from the asteroid Bennu, ending a journey that began seven years ago.The flyby by OSIRIS-REx will allow the storage capsule to re-enter Earth’s atmosphere and parachute down onto a U.S. military area in Utah’s West Desert, two years and four months after leaving the carbon-rich asteroid, where the craft collected about 250 grams of material.OSIRIS-REx had travelled to a crater in the asteroid’s northern hemisphere where it lowered a robotic arm into the surface to extract the third and largest sample ever taken from an asteroid…

SWNS / OnePoll Nearly three-quarters of gamers are certain that video games have improved their lives. A recent survey of 2,000 American gamers revealed how video games are more than just hobbies—72% of respondents attested to the positive impact of the pastime on various aspects of daily life. Sixty-eight percent credit games for enhancing relaxation, and 67% say they improve problem-solving skills. More than six in ten believe they also sharpen critical thinking and enhance better hand-eye coordination. 38% of respondents said gaming helps them with the ‘soft skill’ of cooperating with others. More than two-thirds (68%) could feel their…

Vancouver actress and filmmaker Meredith Hama-Brown is making her feature film directorial debut with the award-winning Seagrass.The film recently won the International Film Critic’s Award at the Toronto International Film Festival and will be shown at the Vancouver International Film Festival, which runs from Sept. 28 to Oct. 8. Hama-Brown’s film follows a Japanese-Canadian woman still reeling from the death of her mother. The woman, Judith, takes her family on a retreat, where her relationship with her husband unravels. While the story is fictitious, Hama-Brown said the themes are inspired by her own experience and heritage as a Japanese-Canadian.She shared more about the film with…

Jamaican fruit bat – SWNS license A new study shows that bats evolved to avoid cancer and the data may uncover how humans can treat or prevent viruses as well as cancer. A rapid evolution in bats, the only winged mammal, may account for their “extraordinary” ability to both host and survive infections and even to avoid cancer—and that success is in their genes. Bats are exceptional among mammals for not only their ability to fly but also their long lives, low cancer rates, and robust immune systems. The ability of bats to tolerate viral infections may stem from unusual…

Recorded in St. John’s during the pandemic, Sonny Don’t Go Away: A Tribute to Ron Hynes, features 20 artists from Newfoundland and Labrador. (Sonic Records )The biggest music acts in Newfoundland and Labrador music are set to release a new tribute album for the late Ron Hynes, the singer-songer often dubbed “the man of a thousand songs.”Sonny Don’t Go Away: A Tribute to Ron Hynes features 20 of Hynes’s best-known songs, and the list of cover artists includes many of the best-known performers in the province, including Alan Doyle, Kellie Loder, the Once, Shanneyganock and Amelia Curran, to name a few. Doyle co-produced…

Enthusiasts say their shared interest has widened their social circle as they bond over all things horological.Two years ago, Johnathan Chan, Helbert Tsang and Carlos Pang — friends from Hong Kong with a shared interest in timepieces — booked a table for three at a cigar club in the city’s Central district so they could chat about watches over drinks.A week before the get-together, the men promoted their new group, the Horology Club, on Instagram in case anyone else wanted to join. As the evening drew nearer, they had to keep expanding the reservation to accommodate more RSVPs. In the…

Professionals and hobbyists share their tips for improving your timepiece images.In an industry whose lingua franca is the #wristshot (3.2 million tags on Instagram and counting), photographs of watches can often look redundant and uninspired.In 2020, during the pandemic, James Kong, then a corporate lawyer in New York, sought to change that. He had purchased a new camera and resolved to post one new watch image to Instagram every day, with the goal of making his timepieces look “heroic,” Mr. Kong said by phone last month.“I was working from home, and I needed something to get my mind off everything…

Isle McElroy’s second novel, “People Collide,” puts a pair of bored newlyweds in each other’s shoes.PEOPLE COLLIDE, by Isle McElroyAsked to choose flight or invisibility as a superpower — that old party game — how many novelists would choose flight, like captains of industry tend to do? Invisibility is, with little exception, the novelist’s superpower. Overhearing conversations. Entering bedrooms. Being, frankly, a little creepy.“People Collide,” the second novel by Isle McElroy, grants an intriguing sort of invisibility to its main characters as well. They are young marrieds of 28 who’ve mysteriously switched bodies but not brains, as the mother and…