Independent | Common News Update

Feb202021 by adminNo Comments

Rocks: Drama starring schoolgirls wins British Independent Film Awards

Entertainment

Altitude FilmsA film that cast unknown east London schoolgirls in most of its main roles has been honoured with five prizes at the British Independent Film Awards.Rocks won best British independent film, and one of its stars, Kosar Ali, 17, was named both best supporting actress and most promising newcomer.Rocks got glowing reviews when it came out last year and is now on Netflix.Its other winners included D'Angelou Osei Kissiedu, who was just seven when he played little brother Emmanuel.He was named best supporting actor, with a seven-decade age gap between him and the winner of the best actor award - Sir Anthony Hopkins, 83, who was recognised for playing a man struggling with dementia in The Father.Altitude FilmsTo find the young stars of Rocks, director Sarah Gavron and casting directo...

Jan132021 by adminNo Comments

Social networks explain why independent cultures interpret the world in similar ways

Science

Jan. 13 (UPI) -- How can cultures that developed on opposite sides of the world come to similar understandings about colors, shapes, familial relationships and other categorical systems? The traditional explanation for this cross-cultural continuity is that humans are born with categories wired into their brains. Advertisement Researchers with the Annenberg School for Communication at the University of Pennsylvania, however, have an alternative explanation. It's not the human brain, exactly, that yields categorical consensus across disparate groups, researchers contend in a new paper, published in the journal Nature Communications, but the dynamics of consensus building among large groups of people. The phenomenon of "category convergence" has long been recognized by archaeologists in th...

Oct152020 by adminNo Comments

Neville, Lewis & Bernstein lobby for independent football regulation to solve ‘crisis’

Sports

Former England defender Gary Neville, retired Olympian Denise Lewis and ex-Football Association chairman David Bernstein have combined to call for independent regulation of English football to solve its "crisis".The trio are part of a group who have issued a manifesto for change called 'Saving Our Beautiful Game'.It is the latest development of a fractious week in which controversial plans to restructure English football - led by Liverpool and Manchester United - emerged on Sunday, only to be condemned by the Premier League itself and then quickly rejected at meeting of all 20 top flight clubs on Wednesday.And the group calling for independent regulation came forward on the same day EFL chairman Rick Parry claimed his FA counterpart Greg Clarke had "initiated" talks over the radical restru...

Apr292020 by adminNo Comments

Australia pushes for independent virus probe as tensions climb with China

World

April 29 (UPI) -- Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison endorsed an independent investigation into the origins of the coronavirus on Wednesday as tensions between the island nation and China continue to climb. During a press briefing in Canberra, Morrison told reporters that Australia is going to continue pushing for an independent review of the virus' origins and of China's early handling of the outbreak despite mounting criticism from the Asian nation. "This is a virus that has taken more than 200,000 lives across the world. It has shut down the global economy. The implications and impacts of this are extraordinary," Morrison said. "Now, it would seem entirely reasonable and sensible that the world would want to have an independent assessment of how this all occurred, so we can lear...

Jan92020 by adminNo Comments

NASA: ‘Joint, independent team’ will probe Boeing Starliner orbital glitch

Science

Jan. 8 (UPI) -- NASA is establishing a "joint, independent team" to probe the failure of Boeing's Starliner space capsule to reach the International Space Station during a test flight. The investigation comes as NASA is feeling pressure to stop relying on Russian Soyuz capsules to carry astronauts to the station. Boeing and its competitor, SpaceX, are years behind schedule in developing a new spacecraft to carry people. Starliner was launched Dec. 20 without a crew, and a problem with its mission clock caused it to burn fuel needlessly. That meant it wasn't able to reach the orbit necessary to catch up with the space station. Despite the problem, Boeing and NASA said the test mission accomplished most of its goals. Initial data showed the capsule was a safe environment in which to carry ...