The Obama administration announced Friday that it is finalizing sanctions against the regime of Libyan strongman Moammar Gaddafi and has temporarily closed the
U.S. Embassy in strife-tornTripoli. Mercurial forward Ronaldinho was
dropped by Brazil on Tuesday as coach
Luiz Felipe Scolari named his squad for this month's friendlies against Italy and Russia.Kirsten Dunst and Jim Sturgess are lovers kept apart by physics, among
other forces, in a
new release with a science-fiction twist. The John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation has announced that Professor
Erik Demaine and his father, CSAIL Visiting Scientist Martin Demaine, have been named 2013 Guggenheim Fellows for their work with origami from wood, plastic, metal and glass.
The Demaines were selected for this honor from a group of almost 3,000 applicants and are two
of the 175 scholars, artists and scientists honored by the Guggenheim Foundation this year.
“These artists and writers, scholars and scientists, represent the best of the best,â€Â
said Edward Hirsch, president of the Foundation, about the
2013 class of Guggenheim Fellows. “Since 1925, the Guggenheim Foundation has always bet everything on the
individual, and we’re thrilled to continue the tradition with this wonderfully talented and diverse group. It’s an honor to be able
to support these individuals
to
do the work they were meant to do.â€ÂErik
Demaine, a MacArthur Fellow and Alfred P.
Sloan Research Fellow, is a member of
the Theory of Computation Group and the Algorithms Group at CSAIL. An accomplished artist, his interests include origami and glassblowing.
Several of his curved origami sculptures are housed in the permanent collection at the
Museum of Modern Art in New York.Martin
Demaine is the Angelika and Barton Weller Artist-in-Residence in the MIT Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, a technical instructor in the Department of Materials Science
and Engineering Glass Lab and a
member of the Theory of Computation Group at CSAIL.Since
its establishment in 1925, the Foundation has granted over $306 million in fellowships to more than 17,500 individuals, including scores of Nobel laureates, poets laureate, winners of Pulitzer Prizes, Fields Medals and of
other important, internationally recognized honors.
NEW YORK -- Fixed mortgage rates tumbled this week and the 15-year loan dipped below 4 percent for the first time in three months. Rates followed the yield on U.S.
Treasury bonds, which fell on worries that the crisis in Japan could slow economic growth.
A princess was the first occupant of this five-bedroom brick home, called the Pagoda. Its owners are entertaining offers of at least $4.54 million.
David Lynch doesn't want you to
call him a musician He's a renowned filmmaker and self-taught improv[...]
SAN SALVADOR -- Drug cartel violence in Mexico is quickly spilling south into Central America and
is threatening to destabilize fragile countries already rife
with crime and corruption, according to the United Nations, U.S.
officials and regional law enforcement agents.
Bucks readers tell us
about their experiences choosing a college and how they dealt with the issue of financial aid.
In Minneapolis, letting the children have their way with decorating. Despite strategic gains, anti-government fighters continue to struggle. Despite a strong pull desire to finish hisdegree, Partick Nyarko decided to turn pro and enter the MLS after a head-turning junior year at Virginia Tech. The season’s seven episodes averaged 11.5 million viewers a week, PBS said after it received updated Nielsen numbers that included
digital video recorder playback. Scott Feldman pitched six solid innings, Anthony Rizzo had a key two-run single and the Chicago Cubs held on to beat the Milwaukee Brewers 5-4 on
Wednesday night.
Picower Institute
for Learning and
Memory Neuroscientist Matt Wilson has shown not only that animals dream, but that they dream about what they experience. In a lab rat’s world, that means navigating mazes. In Wilson’s latest study, slated to appear Sept. 2 in Nature Neuroscience, researchers manipulated the content of rodent dreams by replaying an audio cue that accompanied that day’s maze.
In a study  led by Daniel Bendor, Picower Institute postdoctoral fellow, and Wilson, the Associate Department Head for Education and Sherman Fairchild Professor of Neuroscience in MIT's Department of Brain and Cognitive Sciences  rats were trained to run a maze
using audio cues: one sound directed the animal to run to
the right end of the track for
a reward and a different sound meant the reward could
be found on the left. As the animals slept, researchers recorded the activity of specific neurons within their brains that allowed them to see, as in previous experiments, that the animals’ dreams were a replay of the maze-running task they had learned while awake.
Except this time, when the researchers played the audio cues into the cages of the slumbering rodents, the rats were more likely to dream about the section of the maze previously associated with the audio cue. “Our most recent experiments demonstrate the ability to bias the content of reactivated memory during
sleep to specific past experiences. This could be
thought of as a simple form of dream engineering and opens up the possibility of more extensive control of memory processing during sleep to enhance selected memories and to
block or modify unwanted memories,†the researchers wrote. Wilson’s lab, which aims to
establish the role
of sleep in memory and cognition, hopes the knowledge will lead to new approaches to learning and behavioral therapy through manipulation of brain systems during sleep.
This work was supported by the National Institutes of Health, a Helen Hay Whitney Postdoctoral Fellowship, and Charles A. King Trust Postdoctoral Fellowship. From Casablanca to The Killing – the elements of a great script are essentially the same. John Yorke – who is responsible
for some of the most popular recent British TV dramas – reveals how and why the best screenwriting worksOnce upon a time, in such and such
a place, something happened." In basic terms
that's about it – the very best definition of a story.
What an archetypal story
does is introduce you to a central character – the
protagonist – and invite you to identify with them; effectively they become your avatar in the drama. So you have a central character, you google sniper them, and something then happens to them, and that something
is the genesis of the
story.
Jack discovers a beanstalk; Bond learns Blofeld plans to take over the
world.
The "something" is almost always a problem, sometimes a problem disguised as an opportunity.
It's usually something that throws your protagonist's world out of kilter – an explosion in the normal
steady pace of their lives: Alice falls down a rabbit hole; spooks learn of a radical terrorist plot; Godot doesn't turn up.Your character has a
problem that he or she must solve: Alice has to get back to the real world; our spooks
have to stop a bomb going off in central London; Vladimir and Estragon have to wait.
The story is the journey they go on to sort out the problem presented. On the way they may learn something
new about themselves;
they'll
certainly be faced
with a series of
obstacles to overcome; there will be a moment near
the end where all hope
seems lost, and this will almost certainly be followed by a last-minute resurrection of
hope, a final
battle against
the odds, and victory snatched from the jaws of defeat.You'll see this shape (or its tragic counterpart) working at some level in every story.
It might be big and pronounced, as in Alien or Jaws, it might be
subtler, as in
Ordinary People, or
it might represent a reaction against
it (Jean-Luc Godard's
Weekend) – but it will be there.
It reveals itself most clearly in the framework of the classic crime or hospital drama.
A murder is committed or someone gets sick; the detective or doctor must find the
killer or make their patient well.
That's why detective fiction is so popular; the unifying factors that appear at
some level in all stories are at their most accessible here.The
protagonistNormally the protagonist is
obvious.
It's Batman, it's James
Bond, it's
Indiana Jones.
If it's difficult to identify a protagonist then perhaps the
story is about more than one person (say EastEnders, or Robert Altman's Short Cuts) but it will always be the person the audience cares about most.But already we encounter difficulties. "Care" is often translated as "like", which is why so many screenwriters are given the note (often by non-writing executives) "Can you make
them nice?" Frank Cottrell
Boyce, a graduate of Brookside and one of Britain's most successful screenwriters, puts it more forcibly than most: "Sympathy is like crack cocaine to
industry execs.
I've had at least one wonderful screenplay of mine
maimed by a sympathy-skank. Yes, of course the audience has to relate to your characters, but they don't need to approve of them.
If characters are going to do something bad, Hollywood wants you to build in an excuse note."We don't like Satan in Paradise Lost – we love him. And we love him because he's the perfect gleeful embodiment of evil. Niceness tends to kill characters.
Much more interesting are the rough edges, the darkness
– and we love these
things because, though we may not want to admit it, they touch something deep inside us.
If you play video
games such as Grand Theft Auto or Call of Duty: Modern Warfare (and millions do), then you occupy
literal avatars
that do little but kill, maim,
destroy, or sleep with the
obstacles
in your path. David Edgar justified his play about Nazi architect Albert Speer by saying: "The awful truth – and
it is awful, in both senses of the word – is that the response most great drama asks of us is neither 'yes
please' nor 'no thanks' but 'you, too?' Or, in the cold light of dawn, 'there but for the grace of God go I.'"The
key to empathy, then, does not
lie in manners or good behaviour. Nor does it
lie, as is
often claimed, in the understanding of motive. It's certainly true that if we know why characters do what they do,
we will love them more. However, that's
a symptom of empathy, not its root cause. It lies
in its ability to access and bond with our unconscious.Why
are so many
fictional policeman and doctors mavericks? Laziness on the
writers' behalf possibly, but can that
really
account for the widespread prevalence of one particular character trait? Why did so
many find themselves drawn to Sarah Lund
in The Killing? Like her pulp-fiction counterparts, she broke
the rules, ignored her bosses and went behind their backs; like them she was told by her bosses:
"You've got 24 hours or
I'm taking you off the case." Why did she – and why do all mavericks – prove so popular? Largely because that's how many of us feel
at times, too.
When we watch
Sarah Lund rejecting her bosses, we think, "I
wish I could do that"; when we watch Miranda Hart's Chummy in Call the Midwife, we bleed for her
clumsiness.
There is something immensely attractive in living through a character who does obtain revenge, who is proved to have value or, like Lund, is finally proved right.
The attraction of wish fulfilment, benevolent or masochistic, can't be underestimated – what else can explain the ubiquity of Cinderella or
the current global
dominance of the Marvel franchise? Isn't
there a Peter Parker in most of us, longing to turn into Spider-Man? We may recoil at the idea of
empathising with Adolf ******
but, as Downfall attests, we can and
do.The antagonistSo something happens to
a central character that throws them off the beaten track and forces them into a world they've never seen.
A beanstalk grows; a patient collapses, a murder is committed.
All of these
actions have consequences; which in turn provoke obstacles that are commonly dubbed forces of antagonism – the sum total of all
the obstacles that obstruct a character in the pursuit of
their desires.The
detective and "monster" templates illustrate this well, but antagonism can manifest itself in many different ways, most interestingly when it lies within the protagonist. Cowardice, drunkenness, lack of self-esteem – all will serve as internal obstacles that prevent a character
reaching fulfilment; all make the person more real.
fat burning furnace can be external
(James Bond), internal (The Diving Bell and the Butterfly) or both (Jaws), all have one thing in common, which Hitchcock summarised succinctly: "The more successful the
villain, the more successful the picture."What
do Bond
and Blofeld, Sarah Connor and the Terminator, Sam Tyler and Gene Hunt
(Life on Mars), Fiona and Frank Gallagher (Shameless) have in common? They're all
opposites. "We're not so very different, you and I," says Karla
to Smiley in Tinker Tailor
Soldier Spy.
"We both spend our lives looking for the weaknesses in one and another's systems."As
the Joker, displaying
an uncharacteristic grasp of story structure, says to Batman in The Dark Knight, "You complete me."
All forces of antagonism embody the qualities missing in their protagonist's
lives.The desireIf a character doesn't want something, they're passive.
Aaron Sorkin, writer of The West Wing put
it succinctly: "Somebody's got to want something, something's got to
be standing in their way of getting it. You do that and you'll have a scene."The
Russian actor, director and theoretician
Konstantin Stanislavski first articulated the idea that characters are motivated by desire. To find Nemo, to put out the Towering Inferno, to clear their
name, to catch a thief, purpose
must be bestowed and
actively sought. Why do characters
in EastEnders offer up the mantra, "It's all about family"? Because it gives them something to fight for; it gives them a goal – it brings
them to
life.
"Tell me what you want," said Anton Chekhov, "and I will tell you what manner of man you are."Whether simple (kill the shark) or profound (return the key in Channel 4's The Promise), the underlying "grail
quest" structure is ever present. Cops want to catch the killer, doctors want to heal their patient.
In North by Northwest,
everyone is simply chasing microfilm of an unspecified variety.
Again, Hitchcock says it best: "[We] have a name in the studio, and we call it the 'MacGuffin'.
It is the mechanical element that usually crops up in any story. In crook stories it is almost always the necklace and in spy stories it is most always the papers."When "something happens" to a hero at the beginning of a drama,
that something, at some level, is a disruption to their perceived security. Duly alarmed, they seek to rectify their situation; their "want" is to find that security once again. They may often, however, choose to
find that security in the wrong place. What a character thinks is good for them
is often bad.
This conflict is one of the fundamental tenets of
structure, because it embodies the battle between external and internal
desire.External and internal desireBlockbusters, with one or two exceptions, are two–dimensional. It's a world where desire is simple: the hero wants something - to kill Bill or
find the secret of the Unicorn. In pursuit of
that goal the multiplex hero
doesn't change.The
cynic might say that's because of the demands of the franchise – we want James Bond to be the same in every film. But Bond is the refined, simplified bastardisation of
a deeper archetype.
He is white bread: impurities
removed, digestion eased; a product of the demand for the thrill of story, minus its more troubling and disturbing elements.
Bond just wants; he is an embodiment of pure desire. Three-dimensional characters, however, do change.When we first meet
Thelma and Louise they are living in darkness, mortgage-holders in a conservative American society.
In The Lives of Others, Hauptmann Wiesler is a Stasi agent, the product of a world where empathy doesn't exist.
Here he
can flourish – his power and steel are terrifying.Thelma, Louise
and Wiesler are all flawed characters, and
it is this concept of "flaw" that is critical
in three-dimensional
storytelling. Wiesler cannot care; the
women are unknowingly repressed.Flaw
or need isn't the same as want
or desire.
Wiesler wants to punish the dissident couple he
has been sent to spy on; Thelma and Louise want to escape the police and
get to Mexico.
Both sets of characters
go on a journey to recognise that what they want stands
in direct
opposition to
what they need. Going to Mexico or imprisoning dissidents will not make them complete.The Russian
formalist Vladimir Propp coined the beautiful term "lack" for what a protagonist is
missing in the initial stages of any story, and it's this lack that three-dimensional stories exploit.While it's possible for characters to get what they want and what they need (certainly that's what happens in Aliens or Star Wars), the true, more universal and powerful archetype
occurs when the
initial, ego-driven goal is abandoned for something more important, more nourishing, more essential. In Rocky, Cars, Saving Private Ryan, Little Miss Sunshine, Midnight Run and Tootsie, the heroes find a goal they weren't aware they were looking for.The inciting incidentAll stories have a premise – "What if?" This is almost always the inciting incident, or the "something" that happens. In The Long Good Friday
Harold Shand is a gangster, planning to develop London's derelict docklands.
He's invited the mafia to London to
secure their investment when, without warning, one of his gang, charged with taking Harold's mother
to church, is blown up
in his car. That's the inciting incident – or part of it, because what the inciting incident must also do is awaken a desire.
We go back to our story shape: a problem occurs; a solution is sought.
Harold's solution is to track down the perpetrators and
destroy them: "I'll
have his carcasses dripping blood by midnight," he mutters. That's his "want", and that's the film.Hollywood tends to insist that inciting incidents are massive explosions.
But as Fawlty Towers demonstrates, they may just be the arrival of a guest followed by an ever-growing complication AW Schlegel first codified the structural
point in 1808, calling them "first determinations". In many ways, it remains the perfect term.The
journeyIn Terminator 2,Arnold Schwarzenegger was turned from villain into hero, arguably helping position him as a family-friendly star, but the far more significant adjustment
was the upgrade the character underwent. The
new model Terminator, the T2, was programmed to learn from his surroundings and experience.
Cunningly, his fat loss factor undergo internal change was actually built
into the script.Compare
From Russia with Love with Casino Royale,
and The Terminator with Terminator 2: the
former in each case is a brilliantly slick product, but the latter has a far
greater depth and resonance. As the heroes pursue their goals, their journeys in the latter films move us beyond visceral thrill to touch not just our senses but something deeper.
In both sequels, the protagonists' superficial wants remain unsated; they're rejected in favour of the
more profound unconscious hunger
inside.
The characters get what they need.
Expecting one thing on our quest, we find ourselves confronted
with another; traditional
worldviews aren't reinforced, prejudices aren't reaffirmed; instead
the protagonists' worldviews – and
ours too – are realigned.The
quest
is an integral ingredient of all archetypal stories, internal or external, and, perhaps most rewardingly, both. Change of some kind is at the heart of this quest, and so too is choice, because finally the protagonist must choose how to change. Nowhere is this more clearly embodied than in the crisis.The
crisisThe crisis is a
kind of death: someone close to the hero dies (The Godfather), the heroes themselves appear to die (ET) but more
commonly all hope passes away. Some US TV drama series refer to it as the "worst case," and in BBC continuing drama, "worst point" has become an almost ubiquitous term. Not for nothing; it's the point of maximum jeopardy in any script, the moment the viewer should be shouting "Oh no!" at the screen, the moment where it seems impossible for the hero to "get out of that".
The crisis is also, in self-contained stories, almost always the cliffhanger before the last commercial break and
the ending of
every episode of EastEnders, of the 1960s Batman TV series and every American serial film of the 1940s from Superman to Flash Gordon.The crisis occurs when the hero's final dilemma is crystallised, the moment they are faced with the most important question of the story; just what kind of person are they? This choice is the final test of character,
because it's the moment where the hero is forced to face up to their dramatic need or flaw.
In the Pilgrim's Progress-type structure that underlies Star Wars, Luke's choice is between that of being a boy and a man; in Casablanca Rick has to confront and overcome his selfishness ("I stick
my neck out for
no man"), and in
Aliens Ripley learns, by choosing to save Newt, that she can be
a mother once again. In all you can see
the cleverness of the
structural design, where the external antagonists are the embodiments
of what each protagonist fears most.
To overcome that which lies without, they must overcome the chasm within.Hence the stench of death – every crisis is the protagonists' opportunity to kill off their old selves and live anew. Their
choice is to deny change and
return to their former selves, or confront their innermost fears, overcome them and be rewarded.
When Gary sings, "Am I a man or a Muppet?" at his crisis point in 2011's The Muppets, he's articulating the quintessential dilemma all protagonists face at this crucial structural
point. Being a "man" is the road less travelled, and it's the much harder choice.The
climaxThe climax is the stage at which the protagonist finds release from their seemingly
inescapable predicament. It's
the final showdown with their antagonist, the battle in which the hero engages with their dramatic need and overcomes their flaw. Historically it is sometimes referred to as the "obligatory scene" (a term coined in the 19th century by French drama
critic Francisque Sarcey).When Thelma and Louise shoot the rapist and decide to run from the law, there's one essential sequence that has to
happen: they must do battle with the law.
Once Elliot has
adopted
ET and saved him from
the faceless hordes of government, he has to face the "villains" he's hidden him from.During
each film we watch as Thelma, Louise and Elliot develop the skills they need to overcome their flaws; the two women need to believe in themselves and each other; Elliot
needs to find the tenacity and selflessness within. And here, in the climax, they apply them. Both are classically structured films, where the flaws of the protagonists are embodied in the characterisation of the antagonists, so that in
ET, when Elliot overcomes his external obstacle, his internal need
is liberated, and when the women renounce society they become (we are led to believe)
emancipated and whole.A
climax can be
subverted
(the Coen brothers' No Country For Old Men kills its protagonist at the crisis point, but it's very much an exception) but the effect is akin to Bond running from Blofeld.
Unless it's part of a wider schematic plan it feels wrong – the writer has set up something and then refused to pay it off.The
inciting incident provokes the question "What will
happen?", and the climax (or
obligatory act) declares, "this". It is the peak of the drama.
Protagonist faces antagonist – all come together
to fight it out and be resolved.The resolutionThe
word "denouement" is a derivation of dénouer, meaning "to untie", and that's what it is – the knots of plot are undone and complications unravelled. But it is also a tying up of
loose ends. In a classically structured work there
must be a payoff for every set-up, no strand left forgotten.Traditionally, stories always ended happily ever after, with all action resolved.
Either the tragic hero died or the romantic couple got married. As the journalist and author Christopher Booker has observed, a number of significant changes took place
as a
result of the industrial revolution in the way we tell stories. "Open endings" have become more commonplace, partly to add an air of uncertainty and partly
because, in a godless universe, death doesn't mean what it once did.
As Shakespearean scholar Jan Kott noted: "Ancient tragedy is loss of life,
modern tragedy
is loss of purpose."
Characters nowadays are just as likely to drift into meaningless oblivion as to die
(The Godfather: Part II); just as likely not to marry as to find
themselves at the altar (Four Weddings and a Funeral).
Archetypal endings can also be twisted to great effect.
google sniper found an extremely clever way of subverting the normal character arc, by brutally cutting it off at an arbitrary point. The death of Omar Little at the hands of a complete stranger works precisely because it's so narratively wrong; it undercuts the classic
hero's journey by employing all its conventions up to the point of sudden, tawdry and unexpected death. In effect, saying this is a world where such codes don't operate, such subversion also has the added bonus of telling
us just how the cruel and godless world of Baltimore drug-dealing really works.Putting it all togetherThese building blocks are the primary colours of storytelling.
To a
greater or lesser extent they either occur in all stories, or else their absence (the missing bit of Omar's arc in The Wire; the
early death of the hero in No Country for Old Men) has an implied narrative effect. In archetypal form these are the elements that come together to shape the skeleton of almost every story we see, read
or hear. If you put them all together, that skeleton structure looks like this:Once upon a time a young friendless boy called Elliot discovered an alien in his backyard. Realising that unless he helped the creature home it would die, he took it on himself to outwit the authorities, win over sceptics and in a race against time, in a true act of courage, set his friend free.It sounds very simplistic, and in some senses it is, but like the alphabet or the notes on a musical stave, it is an
endlessly adaptable form.
Just how adaptable starts to become clear when we see how it lends
itself to conveying a tragic tale.TragedyWhen we first meet Michael Corleone in The Godfather he's in an army uniform. Every inch
the war hero, he explains the nefarious deeds of his father and
his brothers to his fiancee, before mollifying her: "That's my family, Kay, that's
not me."
Macbeth bears an uncanny resemblance.
As he
emerges from the mists of battle, Duncan cannot help but be impressed: "So well thy words become thee, as thy
wounds: They smack of honour both."Michael
Corleone and
Macbeth are both flawed, but their faults are not what are
traditionally described as tragic flaws or blind spots. They are, instead, good qualities: selflessness and bravery, and it is this that provides the key to how tragic story shape really works.Tragedies follow exactly the same principles as Jaws or ET but in reverse.
In tragedy
a character's flaw is what conventional society might term normal or good – a goodness that characters overturn to become evil in their own way.
Historically, critics have focused on the Aristotelian definition of a fatal malignant flaw to describe tragic heroes, but it is just as instructive, I would argue,
to chart how their goodness rots.
It's a common trope of liberal American movies (in both The Good Shepherd and The Ides
of March idealistic patriots
find their morals slowly eaten
away) but
it's equally apparent in Hilary Mantel's Wolf Hall, where Thomas Cromwell undergoes a similar corruption.
It is
Cromwell's goodness
that corrodes him, his loyalty to
Cardinal Newman that fixes him on the same tragic trajectory as both Macbeth and Michael Corleone. Furthermore, it's a goodness that is
corroded according to an absolutely archetypal pattern.
From Line of Duty to Moby-****, Dr Faustus to Lolita ("good" is a relative concept), there's a clear pathway
the characters follow as,
in pursuit of their goal, their moral centre collapses.
The initial goals
can be good (The Godfather or Line of Duty), seemingly innocuous (Carmen, Dr
Faustus), but the end-result is the same: the characters are consumed by overwhelming egotistical desire.It
seems
impossible to understand how, with only eight notes in an octave,
we don't simply run out of music. But just as tones give rise to semi-tones and time signatures, tempo and style
alter content, so we start to see that a simple pattern contains within it the possibility of endless permutations.
Feed in a different kind of flaw; reward or punish the characters in a variety of ways; and you create a different
kind of story.What's
more fascinating perhaps is just why the underlying pattern exists, and why we reproduce it whether we've studied
narrative or not. Every act of perception is an attempt to lasso the outside world and render it into meaning.
Elliot's journey to maturity,
just like the Terminator's journey to human understanding, are interpretations of that basic act. Both metaphorically (and
literally in the case of
ET) every story can
therefore be seen as a journey into the woods to find the secret that lies outside the self. It's in that journey that narrative shape is forged.•
Into the Woods: A Five Act Journey into Story by John Yorke
is published by Particular Books on 4 April (£16.99).FilmDramaTelevisionDramaguardian.co.uk
© 2013 Guardian News and Media Limited or its affiliated companies. All rights
reserved. | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds With a pool in the basement, a courtyard out
back and a terrace on the roof, this
property is on the market for $3.013
million. Princess Madeleine of Sweden, 30 and newly married, attended the Valentino couture show in Paris.
Michelle Obama said she kept her perspective on a life in
the spotlight as she promoted a physical education
initiative for children.
Galatasaray clinched their 19th Turkish league title with a 4-2 win over Sivasspor on Sunday, crowning a successful
season in which they reached the quarter-finals of the Champions League.
These unlikely but affectionate pets turn out to be good listeners. And, their devoted owners say, you can tell they really care.
“Lucky Guy,†starring Tom Hanks, has recouped its capitalization costs after eight
weeks of performances. China is considering price
control mechanisms and tightly regulated markets for its emissions trading schemes (ETS) in a bid to avoid the price volatility and scandals that have hit Europe's ETS, as surveys show
the country has reached European per-capita emission levels. More ' â€œWe will be going to space at the end of this year,†Richard Branson, the founder of Virgin
Galactic, said after the vessel, the SpaceShipTwo, made its
first powered
