Latest news with #ARIA
Saba Yemen
3 days ago
- Science
- Saba Yemen
Scientists launch project to cool earth using marine clouds
London - Saba: A team of scientists at the University of Manchester has launched a project exploring the potential of marine cloud brightening as a temporary measure to mitigate global warming. The project, funded by the UK's Advanced Research and Invention Agency (ARIA), aims to study how spraying sea salt particles can enhance clouds' ability to reflect sunlight, redirecting solar radiation back into space and contributing to lower temperatures on Earth. The team also seeks to assess the impact of this technology on the global climate while considering potential environmental risks. The project is based on marine cloud brightening technology, which involves spraying fine sea salt particles into low-lying clouds over oceans. This process is expected to increase cloud reflectivity by 5-10%, potentially leading to a temporary temperature drop in specific regions—a crucial effect in combating worsening global warming. Preliminary studies suggest that this technique could reduce temperatures within a limited range of 0.5 to 1°C. However, its broader impact on the global climate remains under investigation. Professor Hugh Coe, the project's lead researcher, explained that marine cloud brightening is a temporary solution that does not address the root causes of global warming, such as greenhouse gas emissions. However, it could provide humanity with vital time to accelerate emission reductions and transition to clean energy sources. The technology relies on natural and safe sea salt, which has a short atmospheric lifespan, settling within a few days. This reversibility makes the environmental intervention more controllable compared to more radical approaches, such as stratospheric aerosol injection, whose effects are harder to manage. This project is part of broader efforts to develop innovative solutions to climate change, especially amid rising global temperatures. Dubbed "REFLECT," the project focuses on studying how microscopic sea salt particles can enhance clouds' ability to reflect sunlight back into space, potentially reducing Earth's surface temperature. Whatsapp Telegram Email Print more of (International)
Yahoo
5 days ago
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
50 Cent Mocks ‘Molotov Diddy,' Blasts Him for Allegedly Traumatizing Kid Cudi's Dog
50 Cent trolls Diddy over allegedly traumatizing Kid Cudi's dog and lighting his car on fire. On Thursday, Kid Cudi arrived in Manhattan to testify against Diddy in the disgraced mogul's ongoing criminal trial. As part of his testimony, Cudi said Diddy allegedly threw a molotov cocktail into his car because he was dating Puff's ex-girlfriend, Cassie Ventura. Cudi also claimed Puff traumatized his dog in the process. More from Billboard Here's What 50 Cent Has to Say About People Allegedly Wearing 'Free Diddy' Shirts for $20/Hour Outside Court Morgan Wallen Reclaims ARIA Albums Chart With 'I'm the Problem' Miley Cyrus Performs Live Debut of 'More to Lose' on 'Kimmel' 50 Cent obviously dug his teeth into both of these claims, hopping on Instagram to clown his longtime foe. 'Molotov Diddy was doing old-school sh– out here,' 50 Cent captioned a photo shown in court of Cudi's incinerated car. 'Old killer Rat Jimmy threw one them at us. LOL.' Fif then shared a photo of himself at the gym with a wide grin on his face, seemingly looking at trial updates on his phone. 'What the f— Diddy did to kid cudi Dog? OVER the girl man? LOL,' he wrote. 50 Cent has remained relentless in his taunting of Diddy, who is currently on trial for sex crimes. Earlier in May, the Queens rapper and filmmaker shared a video of people claiming to have been paid to wear 'Free Diddy' shirts outside the Manhattan courtroom. 'Diddy paying people to wear Free Diddy shirts is diabolical,' 50 wrote in the caption. 'But $20 a hour ain't bad. I might go throw that on for a hour tomorrow.' The G-Unit leader had also previously hopped on Instagram after the trial wrapped its third day with cross-examination of Cassie. During her time on the stand, Ventura recounted horrid details about what allegedly transpired during her relationship with Diddy. Clearly what she said swayed 50, who was shook by some of the things he heard. 'After listening to today's testimony, I think the diddler should have took the plea offer,' 50 Cent wrote. 'The sh– they are saying is beyond me, so what do ya think?' Check out the latest posts of Billboard Chart Rewind: In 1989, New Kids on the Block Were 'Hangin' Tough' at No. 1 Janet Jackson's Biggest Billboard Hot 100 Hits H.E.R. & Chris Brown 'Come Through' to No. 1 on Adult R&B Airplay Chart
Yahoo
6 days ago
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
7 Best Moments as Kenny Chesney Becomes First Country Artist to Play Las Vegas' Sphere
Las Vegas may be landlocked, but Kenny Chesney took fans to the beach Thursday night (May 22) in the opening night of his 15-date Sphere run. More from Billboard Morgan Wallen Reclaims ARIA Albums Chart With 'I'm the Problem' Alex Warren Teams Up With Jelly Roll for Stomping Country Single 'Bloodline' Dolly Parton Hasn't Ruled Out Joining Beyoncé on Her Cowboy Carter Tour: 'You Never Know' The four-time Country Music Association Awards entertainer of the year, the first country artist to play the immersive venue, is one of the most celebrated live performers in any genre and he showed once again why during the two-hour and 15-minute concert. During the fun and breezy 27-song set, many songs celebrated the island lifestyle that embodies the spirit of Chesney's No Shoes Nation. According to Billboard Boxscore, Chesney is the only country artist to reach $1 billion in concert grosses reported to Billboard. His passionate No Shoes Nation fanbase has followed him into stadiums, which he has filled for 20 years, so to see him in the 18,000-seat Sphere is a chance to view him relatively close up (despite the crazy steep pitch of the four levels). Throughout the show, Chesney exhibited a welcome spirit of gratitude for his fans, excitement over his first Las Vegas residency (no starting small for him), and elation at being back on stage, noting this was his first show of 2025. As anyone who's seen one of his stadium shows knows, Chesney thrives on contact with prosceniums that extend far out into audience. The Sphere doesn't allow that, so he had to make do with occasionally palm slapping with fans standing in the front section, dubbed The Sandbar, but he still managed to fully connect with the crowd. Chesney, who was inducted into the Country Music Hall of Fame in March, has logged 33 No. 1 hits on Billboard's Country Airplay chart, which is more than any other artist since the chart launched in 1990. He landed his first No. 1 in 1997 with 'She's Got It All,' and most recently topped the chart last year with 'Take Her Home.' In between have been such hits as 'The Good Stuff,' 'Living in Fast Forward,' 'Don't Blink,' 'American Kids,' 'Better as a Memory' and 'No Shoes, No Shirt, No Problem.' So, it's no surprise that the show relied heavily on hits (heck, he could have played nothing but his No. 1s and still had the show go longer than two hours), but he also trotted out deeper cuts and lesser performed tunes to create a one-of-a-kind show. Chesney's residency lasts through June 21 and tallies 15 dates. Billboard was at Sphere for opening night, and we've rounded up the best moments of the evening. It feels like each act who plays Sphere builds on the amazing special effects and visuals from the acts who came before them and betters them, but Chesney's opening sequence was truly spectacular and honestly felt like a theme-park dark ride attraction. The 270-degree wraparound screen (which covers 160,000 square feet) took us deep-sea diving through a shipwreck and further into the abyss, surrounded by sharks and schools of fish before coming to the surface where pirate ships with No Shoes Nation flags flying. At the same time the haptic seats are vibrating and moving as the sea turns into the Sphere and it literally feels like the venue does a 360-degree turn in a move that's breathtaking (and a little nauseating if you're prone to motion sickness) and utterly astounding. So, in other words, make sure you're in your seat when the show starts because you really don't want to miss this thrill ride. Without pandering, Chesney played tribute to Las Vegas in ways both big and small. During 'Living in Fast Forward,' one of Chesney's most enjoyable, upbeat songs 20 years after its release, he incorporated footage of a NASCAR race at Las Vegas Motor Speedway. Then in a much more obvious way, for his last number before the encore, 'Out Last Night,' the scenery switched to the Las Vegas Strip with Sphere with his No Shoes Nation logo and the surrounded hotels including the Venetian and a neon Las Vegas sign (Chesney, embracing the 'What happens in Vegas stays in Vegas' motto, figured the audience would continue the party after they left the venue, noting, 'It's really possible you're going to wake up tomorrow next to someone you know or someone you don't know.' Not to be outdone, Chesney's bass player, Harmoni Kelley rocked a white, sequined jumpsuit in an homage to Elvis's Vegas era. In a show full of dazzling visuals, 'Big Star,' his 2002 song about a woman who ends up a superstar despite all those who doubted her, was a standout. 'Big Star' became a pinball machine drawing the audience in as if part of the game as balls careened around the Sphere and lights flashed. Other than the opening sequence, it was the most immersive, impressive spectacle of the night. But the nicest part was he used the song to pay tribute to some of the women who came before and after him, showing photos of him with Loretta Lynn and Reba McEntire and then Kelsea Ballerini and Megan Moroney, both of whom he has mentored and taken on tour. A little more than half-way through, Chesney huddled with band and crew. They poured a few drinks (made with Blue Chair Rum, no doubt), some of which Chesney and band handed out to audience members. Chesney then said they were deciding what to do next (a nice (that's a nice twist to do every show and add in songs not on the setlist) before launching into 1999's 'She Thinks My Tractor's Sexy.' Shortly into the song, Kelsea Ballerini, in a sparkly silver dress, appeared on stage. Chesney seemed genuinely surprised and mightily delighted to be reunited with his fellow Knoxville native and former touring partner, grabbing her in a sweet bear hug, and expressed his surprise again after they finished the song. They then launched into 'Half of My Hometown,' their 2021 duet that went straight to No. 1, with Ballerini telling him, 'I love you,' at the end, and his answering, 'I love you, too.' They then finished with 'You & Tequila,' his bittersweet 2011 duet with Grace Potter (as the song's video played in the background). Their friendship and affection for each other was sweetly palpable. He noted that she wasn't the only friend in attendance, namechecking Van Halen's Michael Anthony and football great Peyton Manning. If there's one song that sums up Chesney's ethos, it's 2018's 'Get Along,' which Chesney introduced by adding, 'It's what we're about.' It's the only song of the night where the lyrics appeared on the screen, leading to a sing along. And in a world divided, words like 'Always give love the upper hand' and 'Make a friend, can't we all get along?' feel like so much more than just platitudes; they feel like Chesney's Commandments and necessary. Throughout the evening, Chesney's good vibes prevailed, turning Sphere into a big love-in. Fans don't usually look to Chesney for statement songs or tunes that address social issues, but 'Welcome to the Fishbowl,' the title track to his 2012 album, was downright prophetic, looking at the way social media and technology were going to change our world—in many ways for the worse. 'I wrote this song 15 years ago. Little did I know it wasn't a glimpse into the future,' Chesney said. The visuals were especially strong, with Chesney appearing from inside a mobile phone. Coincidentally, sitting inside Sphere definitely feels like sitting inside a fishbowl. Prior to starting his residency, Chesney said he would be digging deep into the catalog, as well as bringing the hits, and did he ever. Right after 'Fishbowl,' he launched into 'One Lonely Island,' from his most recent album, Born. It was the first time he'd done the ballad about two lost souls drifting toward each other for a little comfort or 'a night of healin',' as Chesney sings. He followed that a few songs later with 'Seven Days,' from 2010's Hemingway's Whiskey, another tune that he had never performed live before. 'Thanks for letting us do that,' Chesney said afterwards, but the pleasure was all ours. Best of Billboard Chart Rewind: In 1989, New Kids on the Block Were 'Hangin' Tough' at No. 1 Janet Jackson's Biggest Billboard Hot 100 Hits H.E.R. & Chris Brown 'Come Through' to No. 1 on Adult R&B Airplay Chart
New European
20-05-2025
- Politics
- New European
The ‘secret plan' to dim the sun
'The UK government is planning to block out the sun,' said one TikToker, in a post with hundreds of comments and thousands of likes. 'This isn't a joke'. Even a spoof local Facebook group for Wakefield joked: 'Keir Starmer says he will move further and faster to block the sun after 1 in 10 Brits suffered sunburn over the weekend leaving them reaching for the aftersun.' In recent days, most of the traditional media has been obsessed with Keir Starmer's plans and rhetoric on immigration. But across much of social media, a different UK story is dominating: that Keir Starmer is spending fortunes to dim the sun. Commenters across the internet are incensed. 'They been doing for years I'm sick of it!' said one. 'Government cannot even fix potholes but worried about the sun,' said another. A third took a sceptical, if woefully misinformed, stance: 'Block a sun that's millions of miles away the earths (sic) defo flat'. The issue is trickling through into the mainstream. GB News last month ran an online story headlined: 'Britain to approve £50m sun-dimming experiments in bid to prevent runaway climate change', while the Telegraph last week ran 'The secretive government unit planning to dim the sun'. It has even made it into parliament. During a recent energy questions, Reform MP Lee Anderson asked Ed Miliband 'The secretary of state thinks it's a good idea to fill our fields with solar panels at a cost of billions of pounds to the British taxpayer… so why is he supporting now a project to block out the sunshine?' A nonplussed Miliband, visibly baffled, offered up an answer on investment in solar panels, but had no response to the apparently ridiculous suggestion that the government was trying to block out the sun. The story is one that plays into the hands of conspiracy theorists everywhere; not least people convinced that special planes are spraying chemicals – visible in the form of 'chemtrails' – to either subdue and control the population, or else to alter the climate (the trails, actually 'contrails', are in reality mostly water vapour and are caused by the normal operation of planes' engines). The temptation is to sternly dismiss the stories as misinformation, worry about their effect on politics, and move on – but the situation in reality is more complex than that. For one thing, the story that the government is funding research to dim the sun is almost entirely true. One of Dominic Cummings's few lasting legacies from his time in government was the establishment of ARIA, the Advanced Research and Invention Agency – a quango modelled after the USA defence agency DARPA to fund cutting-edge research. Among its research priorities is investigating climate mitigation: technologies that could reduce global warming, potentially giving the world more time to wean itself off carbon. ARIA is unusually transparent by government standards, and has clear public documents explaining what it will fund in this area and why, plus how it will make decisions – and small-scale experiments on clouds are among those that make the cut. These include experiments to see if clouds at sea could be made more reflective, slowing the warming of the oceans, which act as long-term heat reservoirs. This would involve doing precisely what chemtrail conspiracy theorists have long claimed is already happening – using planes to spray chemicals to modify the climate. The actual plans are far more prosaic than the TikTok or Facebook posts suggest. Unsurprisingly, Starmer is not personally involved. The spending is around £50m – a lot of money to most of us, but only around one 250th of 1% of the government's total spending. The actual research being proposed is little more than a proof of concept – essentially a test of the theory to help compare the proposed solution to alternatives. How difficult is it to make clouds at sea more reflective? How much extra light do they reflect? Are there any unexpected consequences to doing so? A few tens of millions might help provide early answers to those questions. It will absolutely not dim the sun in any way that matters to anything. ARIA says the same thing, albeit more formally, in its public explanation of its research decision. 'We see a need for a programme that will accommodate small, controlled, geographically confined outdoor experiments on approaches that may one day scale to help reduce global temperatures,' it states. 'These outdoor experiments are intended to answer critical scientific questions as to the practicality, measurability, controllability and likely (side-)effects of the proposed approaches that cannot be answered by other means.' ARIA even talks about the need for 'public engagement' before such research is approved for funding, but appears somehow to have been caught off guard by the sustained interest from the public in a project that risks sounding like the secret plan of a Bond villain. Outside of its earnest, flowchart-laden, 'programme thesis' document, it has nothing on its site addressing recent concerns. This does suggest that no one within ARIA stopped to think what might happen if the agency funded a project exploring changing the climate by having planes spray something into clouds – despite there being a long-standing conspiracy movement that believes the government is already doing exactly that. It further suggests that the government itself isn't thinking about such things. At a time when Labour needs to persuade the public to radically change how we live over the next few decades – to avoid or at least mitigate catastrophic climate change – this is disheartening. It is all too tempting to piously complain about 'misinformation' or 'disinformation' in these kinds of contexts, but the terms would be misapplied in this case: the way the story is being told might be overblown, but the core facts are true – the government is indeed exploring this as one of many climate projects. The era when ministers and the lobby media could decide which issues would dominate the news on any given week ended long ago. Millions of people now get their news from social media, not newspapers or TV, and this is on their agenda. If No 10 can't learn how to spot stories like these as they emerge, and to speak to the people who are only reached by influencers about them, then government as we know it is, essentially, cooked. There is nothing malign about Labour's actual plans here – but the fact that they don't even seem to know they need to communicate that is itself deeply alarming. The government is stuck playing a shell game, focusing on what newspapers and the BBC say, and failing to notice that the whole system lost most of its influence years ago. Dimming the sun might not be a particularly important story in itself, but what it says about the loss of media control does matter. Westminster is toying with trials to darken the sky, but has failed to notice that the sun that's actually dimming is the one on the news stands.
Sky News AU
19-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Sky News AU
‘Copy paste': Fans stunned by Sydney Olympics star Nikki Webster's ‘lookalike' daughter as she follows her mum into showbusiness
Nikki Webster has left fans doing a double take after sharing a photo with her lookalike daughter Skylah as she follows in her famous mother's showbiz footsteps. Webster, 38, catapulted to fame as a teenager after performing during both the 2000 Sydney Summer Olympics opening and closing ceremonies. She later signed a recording contract with BMG at the age of 13 and reached No.2 on the ARIA charts with "Strawberry Kisses" in 2001. Webster has continued to pop up on Aussie screens, including on The Masked Singer Australia as 'the alien' in 2019. In 2023, she enjoyed a career comeback after her iconic hit Strawberry Kisses became the unofficial anthem of the Australian Women's Soccer Team The Matildas during the FIFA Women's World Cup. Webster shares daughter Skylah and son Malachi with her former husband Mathew McMah. Now, Webster's daughter Skylah, 10, has followed in her mother's footsteps. Earlier this month, Webster confirmed that Skylah will be appearing in an upcoming production of the musical Annie at The Capital Theatre in Sydney. The mother-of-two has also appeared in several stage productions around Australia, including national productions of The Wizard of Oz, Hair and Rent. Webster recently shared a photo with her lookalike daughter on Instagram, with fans flooding the comments to point out their striking resemblance. 'Copy paste,' one fan wrote. 'Ok come on twins,' another fan wrote. The family update comes after Webster opened up about her journey overcoming domestic violence and becoming a single parent during a radio interview. During an episode of the Kyle & Jackie O Show, the singer confirmed she's been out of a relationship after a 'pretty hard few years'. 'It's a long story. Unfortunately, not a very happy story," she told the KIISFM hosts.
