Latest news with #Verne
The Citizen
02-08-2025
- General
- The Citizen
Centurion students sow seeds of change with sustainability outreach projects
While climate challenges and environmental degradation continue to threaten ecosystems and communities worldwide, a Centurion institution is dedicated to teaching students the importance of sustainability. The NewBridge Graduate Institute (NGI) achieves this through its flagship outreach programme dubbed Sustain, which is donation-funded. In an interview with Rekord, the institution's spokesperson, Timothy Verne, explained that the initiative was launched at the end of 2024 to align with NGI's core values. 'This was also done to help us empower student leaders who uplift their communities,' he said. Verne said the programme is built around seven foundational principles, which include service, unity, sustainability, teaching, advocacy, impact, and networking. 'Service represents NGI's commitment to giving back and supporting communities, while unity focuses on building lasting relationships and fostering collaboration. 'Sustainability reflects the institute's dedication to environmental responsibility and to creating projects with a long-term, positive impact.' He added that through teaching, using the outreach as a platform for education and advocacy, it encourages students to speak up, participate, and engage meaningfully in their environments. 'Impact ensures that all initiatives result in real, measurable change, while networking highlights the importance of expanding NGI's connections, reach, and partnerships across sectors and communities.' The programme includes a wide variety of projects both on and off campus, such as car wash fundraisers, food and clothing collection drives, visits to retirement homes, feeding initiatives, and the creation of sustainable vegetable gardens. Verne said the type and frequency of activity depend entirely on the needs of the organisation or school involved. 'For example, the planting done in June at Irene Primary School addressed a specific need at that time. 'Students from the Highveld Campus came together for a day of action, helping to establish a vegetable garden on the school grounds,' he said. With the support of NGI staff, Grade 6 learners, and NGI student Amber Hawkey, the children were introduced to sustainable gardening methods. Hawkey delivered an engaging presentation, capturing the attention of the young learners and inspiring them to participate actively. 'When I watched the learners plant their seeds, I was reminded that even the tiniest acts of kindness can have a significant impact. 'We planted more than simply a garden with this project. We planted growth, hope, and a long-lasting bond between nature and education,' she said. All the teams involved worked together to transform an empty patch of land into a thriving vegetable garden through hands-on teamwork and determination. In May, Centurion students and NGI staff also participated in a community clean-up around Bank Avenue and nearby intersections. Verne explained that, while the clean-up involved picking up litter and engaging with the public, its purpose was much deeper. 'This was collective action with purpose,' he said. 'When our staff and students work together in the community, they demonstrate what it means to lead with integrity and compassion.' NGI's project manager, Bernadette Loretz, who co-ordinated the clean-up, described the day as inspiring and humbling. 'This project reflects what we stand for at the institution: collaboration, community, and creating sustainable change.' She added that the initiative served as a reminder that a cleaner, happier environment is possible when people come together with a shared vision. Students such as Pearl Mabunda, who took part in the clean-up, described the experience as meaningful and rewarding. 'I volunteered for the NGI Centurion community clean-up because I believe small actions create big change. Making a difference starts with showing up,' she said. Mabunda added that participating in the initiative made her feel more connected to both her peers and her city and gave her a sense of pride in giving back. Verne said these projects are open to all current students and staff, regardless of which field they are in, and that student involvement is promoted through WhatsApp, campus posters, newsletters, and social media announcements. 'A considerable portion of the co-ordination is managed by NGI's Student Representative Council, which also plays a key role in encouraging other students to take part in the various initiatives.' He highlighted that one of the institute's most significant achievements is becoming officially accredited by the British Accreditation Council (BAC). 'This means that NGI students can now have the peace of mind that they are studying at an internationally recognised Council for Higher Education and BAC-accredited institution,' he said. Do you have more information about the story? Please send us an email to [email protected] or phone us on 083 625 4114. For free breaking and community news, visit Rekord's websites: Rekord East For more news and interesting articles, like Rekord on Facebook, follow us on Twitter or Instagram or TikTok.
Miami Herald
30-06-2025
- Entertainment
- Miami Herald
Review: ‘Nautilus' gives Capt. Nemo a swashbuckling origin story
Certain elements of Jules Verne's 1870 novel "Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea" have become a TV series, "Nautilus," on AMC, which picked up the show after Disney+, which ordered and completed it, let it drop. Created by James Dormer, it's not an adaptation but a prequel, or an origin story, as the comic book kids like to say, in which Nemo, not yet captain, sets sail in his submarine for the first time. Verne's imaginative fiction has inspired more and less faithful screen adaptations since the days of silent movies. (Georges Méliès 1902 "A Trip to the Moon," based partially on Verne's 1865 "From the Earth to the Moon," is accounted the first science-fiction film.) For a few midcentury years, perhaps inspired by the success of Disney's own "20,000 Leagues" - a film they continue to exploit in its theme parks - and Mike Todd's "Around the World in 80 Days," it was almost a cottage industry: "Journey to the Center of the Earth," "In Search of the Castaways," "Five Weeks in a Balloon." I grew up watching these films rerun on TV; they are corny and fun, as is "Nautilus," with fancier effects, anticorporate sentiments and people of color. We have seen Nemo played by James Mason, Michael Caine, Patrick Stewart, Ben Cross and Robert Ryan, but in "The Mysterious Island," Verne's sort-of sequel to "Twenty Thousand Leagues," he identified Nemo as an Indian prince, as he is shown here, played by Shazad Latif, deposed by an imperial power, his wife and child murdered. The character is usually a bit of a madman, and this Nemo - pigheaded, bossy - is not wholly an exception, though he is also a young, smoldering, swashbuckling hero and a man more sinned against than sinning. We meet him as a prisoner of the British East India Mercantile Company, "the most powerful corporation to ever exist, more powerful than any country," which is building the Nautilus in India with slave labor, in pursuit, says villainous company director Crawley (Damien Garvey), of "prying open and exploiting the Chinese market." I'm not sure how a submarine is supposed to do that, but, eh, it's a reason. Nemo has been collaborating with the submarine's inventor, Gustave Benoit (Thierry Frémont), who had accepted the corporation's money under the promise that it would be used for exploration - scientists can be so dense. Nemo, whom the professor credits as the mind behind the ship's engine, has his own use for the Nautilus and executes a hasty escape with a half-random crew of fellow inmates in a deftly staged sequence that borrows heavily from "Indiana Jones," an inspirational well to which the series returns throughout. And we're off. On the agenda: escaping, revenge and finding buried treasure to finance revenge. When the Nautilus, hardly on its way, cripples the ship they're traveling on - under the impression that the sub is under attack - the crew is joined, unwillingly, by Humility Lucas (Georgia Flood), a science-minded British socialite with super engineering skills, who is being packed off to Bombay to marry the abominable Lord Pitt (Cameron Cuffe). She's accompanied by a chaperone/warder, Loti (Céline Menville), a Frenchwoman who has a mean way with a dagger, and cabin boy Blaster (Kayden Price). And a little dog too. Sparks obviously will fly between Nemo and Humility - bad sparks, then good sparks, as in an Astaire and Rogers movie - and there are actual sparks from a bad electrical connection Humility works out how to fix. Apart from Benoit, Humility and Loti, a big fellow named Jiacomo (Andrew Shaw), who hails from nobody knows where and speaks a language no one understands, and a British stowaway, the crew of the Nautilus are all people of color - South Asian, Asian, Middle Eastern, African or Pacific Islander. Few are really developed as characters, but the actors give them life, and the supporting players carry the comedy, of which there's a good deal. One episode inverts the tired old scenario in which white explorers are threatened with death by dark-skinned natives; here, the captors are Nordic warrior women. The show is anticolonial and anti-imperialist in a way that "Star Wars" taught audiences to recognize, if not necessarily recognize in the world around them, and anticapitalist in a way that movies have most always been. (The final episode, which has a financial theme, is titled "Too Big to Fail." It is quite absurd.) It can be slow at times, which is not inappropriate to a show that takes place largely underwater. But that its structure is essentially episodic keeps "Nautilus" colorful and more interesting than if it were simply stretched on the rack of a long arc across its 10 episodes. It's a lot like (pre-streaming) "Star Trek," which is, after all, a naval metaphor, its crew sailing through a hostile environment encountering a variety of monsters and cultures week to week; indeed, there are some similar storylines: the crew infected by a mystery spore, the ship threatened by tiny beasties and giant monsters, encounters with a tinpot dictator and semimythological figures - all the while being pursued by a Klingon Bird of Prey, sorry, a giant metal warship. The greatest hits of underwater adventuring (some from Verne's novel) are covered: volcanoes, giant squid, giant eel, engine trouble, running out of air and the ruins of a lost civilization (Is it Atlantis? Benoit hopes so). Less common: a cricket match on the ice. Apart from a pod of whales outside the window (and, later, a whale rescue), not a lot of time is devoted to the wonders of the sea - the special effects budget, which has in other respects been spent lavishly, apparently had no room left for schools of fish. But these submariners have other things on their minds. The odds of a second season, says my cloudy crystal ball, are limited, so you may have to accommodate a few minor cliffhangers if you decide to watch. I did not at all regret the time I spent here, even though I sometimes had no idea what was going on or found it ridiculous when I did, as there was usually some stimulating activity or bit of scenery or detail of steampunk design to enjoy. I mean, I watched an episode of "Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea" recently, a 1960s submarine series, in which guest star John Cassavetes created a superbomb that could destroy three-quarters of the world, and almost nothing in it made any sense at all, including the presence of John Cassavetes. "Nautilus" is actually good. Copyright (C) 2025, Tribune Content Agency, LLC. Portions copyrighted by the respective providers.
Los Angeles Times
29-06-2025
- Entertainment
- Los Angeles Times
‘Nautilus' gives Capt. Nemo a swashbuckling origin story
Certain elements of Jules Verne's 1870 novel 'Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea' have become a TV series, 'Nautilus,' premiering Sunday on AMC, which picked up the show after Disney+, which ordered and completed it, let it drop. Created by James Dormer, it's not an adaptation but a prequel, or an origin story, as the comic book kids like to say, in which Nemo, not yet captain, sets sail in his submarine for the first time. Verne's imaginative fiction has inspired more and less faithful screen adaptations since the days of silent movies. (Georges Méliès 1902 'A Trip to the Moon,' based partially on Verne's 1865 'From the Earth to the Moon,' is accounted the first science-fiction film.) For a few midcentury years, perhaps inspired by the success of Disney's own '20,000 Leagues' — a film they continue to exploit in its theme parks — and Mike Todd's 'Around the World in 80 Days,' it was almost a cottage industry: 'Journey to the Center of the Earth,' 'In Search of the Castaways,' 'Five Weeks in a Balloon.' I grew up watching these films rerun on TV; they are corny and fun, as is 'Nautilus,' with fancier effects, anticorporate sentiments and people of color. We have seen Nemo played by James Mason, Michael Caine, Patrick Stewart, Ben Cross and Robert Ryan, but in 'The Mysterious Island,' Verne's sort-of sequel to 'Twenty Thousand Leagues,' he identified Nemo as an Indian prince, as he is shown here, played by Shazad Latif, deposed by an imperial power, his wife and child murdered. The character is usually a bit of a madman, and this Nemo — pigheaded, bossy — is not wholly an exception, though he is also a young, smoldering, swashbuckling hero and a man more sinned against than sinning. We meet him as a prisoner of the British East India Mercantile Company, 'the most powerful corporation to ever exist, more powerful than any country,' which is building the Nautilus in India with slave labor, in pursuit, says villainous company director Crawley (Damien Garvey), of 'prying open and exploiting the Chinese market.' I'm not sure how a submarine is supposed to do that, but, eh, it's a reason. Nemo has been collaborating with the submarine's inventor, Gustave Benoit (Thierry Frémont), who had accepted the corporation's money under the promise that it would be used for exploration — scientists can be so dense. Nemo, whom the professor credits as the mind behind the ship's engine, has his own use for the Nautilus and executes a hasty escape with a half-random crew of fellow inmates in a deftly staged sequence that borrows heavily from 'Indiana Jones,' an inspirational well to which the series returns throughout. And we're off. On the agenda: escaping, revenge and finding buried treasure to finance revenge. When the Nautilus, hardly on its way, cripples the ship they're traveling on — under the impression that the sub is under attack — the crew is joined, unwillingly, by Humility Lucas (Georgia Flood), a science-minded British socialite with super engineering skills, who is being packed off to Bombay to marry the abominable Lord Pitt (Cameron Cuffe). She's accompanied by a chaperone/warder, Loti (Céline Menville), a Frenchwoman who has a mean way with a dagger, and cabin boy Blaster (Kayden Price). And a little dog too. Sparks obviously will fly between Nemo and Humility — bad sparks, then good sparks, as in an Astaire and Rogers movie — and there are actual sparks from a bad electrical connection Humility works out how to fix. Apart from Benoit, Humility and Loti, a big fellow named Jiacomo (Andrew Shaw), who hails from nobody knows where and speaks a language no one understands, and a British stowaway, the crew of the Nautilus are all people of color — South Asian, Asian, Middle Eastern, African or Pacific Islander. Few are really developed as characters, but the actors give them life, and the supporting players carry the comedy, of which there's a good deal. One episode inverts the tired old scenario in which white explorers are threatened with death by dark-skinned natives; here, the captors are Nordic warrior women. The show is anticolonial and anti-imperialist in a way that 'Star Wars' taught audiences to recognize, if not necessarily recognize in the world around them, and anticapitalist in a way that movies have most always been. (The final episode, which has a financial theme, is titled 'Too Big to Fail.' It is quite absurd.) It can be slow at times, which is not inappropriate to a show that takes place largely underwater. But that its structure is essentially episodic keeps 'Nautilus' colorful and more interesting than if it were simply stretched on the rack of a long arc across its 10 episodes. It's a lot like (pre-streaming) 'Star Trek,' which is, after all, a naval metaphor, its crew sailing through a hostile environment encountering a variety of monsters and cultures week to week; indeed, there are some similar storylines: the crew infected by a mystery spore, the ship threatened by tiny beasties and giant monsters, encounters with a tinpot dictator and semimythological figures — all the while being pursued by a Klingon Bird of Prey, sorry, a giant metal warship. The greatest hits of underwater adventuring (some from Verne's novel) are covered: volcanoes, giant squid, giant eel, engine trouble, running out of air and the ruins of a lost civilization (Is it Atlantis? Benoit hopes so). Less common: a cricket match on the ice. Apart from a pod of whales outside the window (and, later, a whale rescue), not a lot of time is devoted to the wonders of the sea — the special effects budget, which has in other respects been spent lavishly, apparently had no room left for schools of fish. But these submariners have other things on their minds. The odds of a second season, says my cloudy crystal ball, are limited, so you may have to accommodate a few minor cliffhangers if you decide to watch. I did not at all regret the time I spent here, even though I sometimes had no idea what was going on or found it ridiculous when I did, as there was usually some stimulating activity or bit of scenery or detail of steampunk design to enjoy. I mean, I watched an episode of 'Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea' recently, a 1960s submarine series, in which guest star John Cassavetes created a superbomb that could destroy three-quarters of the world, and almost nothing in it made any sense at all, including the presence of John Cassavetes. 'Nautilus' is actually good.
France 24
30-05-2025
- Entertainment
- France 24
Jules Verne: The 'Extraordinary Voyages' of a visionary French writer
France 12:14 Issued on: From the show This week we delve into the life of Jules Verne, one of the world's most widely translated writers. The French author's "Extraordinary Voyages" include "Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea", "Around the World in Eighty Days" and "Journey to the Center of the Earth". They continue to inspire fans of adventure stories, 120 years after his death in 1905. Many consider Verne to be one of the founding fathers of science fiction, while others see him as a visionary. Those familiar with the man himself speak of a tireless worker, with an unparalleled gift for making his ideas accessible to all and, with the help of his publisher Pierre-Jules Hetzel, a creator of imaginary worlds that are still part of the cultural landscape today. We discuss Verne's life and legacy with Jean Verne, his great-grandson; Céline Giton, author of "Jules Verne: an Extraordinary Animal Anthology"; Agnès Marcetteau-Paul, author of "The very curious Jules Verne"; and Pierre Stépanoff, director of the Maison Jules Verne in Amiens.
Time of India
24-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Time of India
NYT Mini Crossword May 24, 2025: Hints and answers to solve today's challenge
The NYT Mini Crossword, a concise yet clever puzzle from The New York Times, has once again engaged word game enthusiasts with a new edition for Saturday, May 24, 2025. While the classic full-sized crossword remains a staple for devoted solvers, the Mini—a compact version available freely—has become a morning ritual for many across the globe. Resembling its larger counterpart in structure but not in scale, the NYT Mini Crossword is reset daily at 10:00 p.m. IST. Saturday's puzzle brought with it a fresh set of clues designed to challenge players' vocabulary, logic, and cultural knowledge in under five minutes. Hints for the NYT Mini Crossword – May 24 Edition To support players hoping to solve the puzzle independently, a set of thoughtful hints has been provided for both Across and Down clues. These prompts avoid direct spoilers, giving solvers an extra nudge without revealing the full answers immediately. by Taboola by Taboola Sponsored Links Sponsored Links Promoted Links Promoted Links You May Like Don't Pay Full Price for 2025's Top Games! Shop Now Undo Across Clues: 1 Across: "Get a load of ____!" — Hint: Common exclamation ending with "S" 5 Across: Balance skill on a ship — Hint: Begins with 'S' 8 Across: Military-style apparel — Hint: Starts with 'T' 9 Across: Windy City transport — Hint: Plural, ends with 'S' 10 Across: Airport wand-wavers — Hint: Three-letter acronym ending in 'A' 11 Across: Asian floral motif — Hint: Plural, common in Chinese art 13 Across: In solitude — Hint: Starts with 'A' 14 Across: Phileas ___ from Verne's novel — Hint: Surname ends in 'G' Down Clues: Live Events 1 Down: Read from a teacup — Hint: Ends in 'F' 2 Down: 'Star Wars' risk-taker — Hint: Starts with 'H' 3 Down: Type or kind — Hint: Starts with 'I' 4 Down: Narrative environment — Hint: Ends in 'G' 5 Down: Haircare directive — Hint: Begins with 'S' 6 Down: 'See for yourself' — Hint: Ends with 'E' 7 Down: Wellness destinations — Hint: Ends in 'S' 12 Down: Creamy holiday beverage — Hint: Starts with 'N' Solutions for NYT Mini Crossword – Saturday, May 24 For those who have exhausted all clues or simply wish to verify their guesses, the following answers have been confirmed as the correct completions of today's NYT Mini: Across: 1 Across: THIS 5 Across: SEA LEGS 8 Across: TANKTOP 9 Across: ELS 10 Across: TSA 11 Across: PEONIES 13 Across: ALONE 14 Across: FOGG Down: 1 Down: TEA LEAF 2 Down: HAN SOLO 3 Down: ILK 4 Down: SETTING 5 Down: STEP 6 Down: GO SEE 7 Down: SPAS 12 Down: NOG FAQs What is the hardest day of the New York Times mini-crossword? The easiest crossword is on Monday, and the hardest is on Saturday. How long does it take people to solve the NYT mini? Most solvers finish it within one to five minutes, depending on their experience and familiarity with clue types. With practice, some can complete it in under a minute. Beginners may take longer at first, which is completely normal!
