SAN DIEGO: Marvel Studios is returning to San Diego Comic-Con for its iconic Saturday night panel, which is expected to feature big announcements and surprise guests.
After Marvel skipped the convention last year due to the Hollywood strikes, which prevented writers and actors from speaking on panels, anticipation for its session in Comic-Con’s famed Hall H is palpable among fans.
The studio is expected to announce news teasing their upcoming titles in its “Phase 5” plan and beyond, with Marvel President Kevin Feige as the only confirmed speaker. He will be joined by several special guests, who may include stars of upcoming Marvel titles like “Captain America: Brave New World,” “Thunderbolts(asterisk)” and “The Fantastic Four.”
Fans are speculating that Marvel will confirm cast members and show clips or trailers for upcoming films and Disney+ series.
Marvel already took over Hall H on Thursday with an electric panel celebrating “Deadpool & Wolverine,” in which the audience was treated to a full screening and surprise guests joining stars Ryan Reynolds and Hugh Jackman on stage.
The mounting enthusiasm for the film at Comic-Con was reflected across the country as the fans rushed to see it in theaters, securing the film as the new record holder for the Thursday preview for an R-rated movie. The comic book film sold an estimated $38.5 million worth of movie tickets from preview screenings Thursday.
The “Deadpool & Wolverine” success woke up a sleepy year for Marvel and assuaged worries about its box-office underperformance in late 2023. The superhero factory hit a record low in November with the launch of “The Marvels,” which opened with just $47 million.
Prior to the studio’s latest opening, which is on track to break more records, the idea of “superhero fatigue” became a popular talking point in the film world.
“Deadpool & Wolverine” and Thursday’s packed panel have dampened discussion of audience apathy for comic book movies.
Marvel returns to Comic-Con with hotly anticipated panel about its post-’Deadpool & Wolverine’ plans
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Marvel returns to Comic-Con with hotly anticipated panel about its post-’Deadpool & Wolverine’ plans
- After Marvel skipped out on the convention last year due to the Hollywood strikes, which prevented writers and actors from speaking on panels
Portrait by humanoid robot to sell at auction in art world first
- The ultra-realistic robot is designed to resemble a human female with a face, large eyes and a brown wig
LONDON: The robot artist Ai-Da, a humanoid powered by artificial intelligence, will be the first of its kind to have a painting sold at a major auction house, organizers said Wednesday.
The work, due to go under the hammer at Sotheby’s in London next month, is described as a “haunting” portrait of the English mathematician Alan Turing, considered one of the fathers of modern computing.
Entitled “AI God,” the 2.2 meter (7.5 ft) high portrait is expected to fetch between £100,000 and £150,000 ($130,000 and $196,000).
The online sale, featuring a range of digital art forms, would explore the intersection between art and technology, according to Sotheby’s.
The ultra-realistic robot is designed to resemble a human female with a face, large eyes and a brown wig and is one of the most advanced in the world.
It works by using AI algorithms and has cameras in its eyes and bionic hands.
Aidan Meller, gallery owner and founder of Ai-Da Robot studio, led the team that created it with artificial intelligence specialists at the universities of Oxford and Birmingham in England.
Meller said Turing, who made his name as a World War II codebreaker, mathematician and early computer scientist, had raised concerns about the use of AI in the 1950s.
The artwork’s “muted tones and broken facial planes” seemingly suggested “the struggles Turing warned we will face when it comes to managing AI,” he said.
Ai-Da’s works were “ethereal and haunting” and “continue to question where the power of AI will take us, and the global race to harness its power,” he added.
In 2022, Ai-Da painted portraits of the acts headlining Glastonbury Festival including Billie Eilish, Diana Ross, Kendrick Lamar and Paul McCartney.
Sotheby’s Digital Art Sale runs from October 31 to November 7.
‘Mysterious black balls’ close Sydney beach
SYDNEY: Hundreds of mysterious black tar-like balls have washed up on a popular Sydney beach, prompting lifeguards to close the strand to swimmers.
“Mysterious, black, ball-shaped debris” began appearing on Coogee Beach on Tuesday afternoon the local mayor said, leaving flummoxed authorities scrambling to find out what they might be, and where they may have come from.
“Coogee Beach is closed until further notice,” Mayor Dylan Parker said in a social media post.
Hundreds of golf-to-cricket-ball-sized spheres could be seen littering the length of sand, which is usually thronged with Sydneysiders and tourists.
Instead, a few seagulls wandered among the spheres, pecking and examining.
“At this stage, it is unknown what the material is, however, they may be ‘tar balls’ which are formed when oil comes in to contact with debris and water, typically the result of oil spills or seepage,” Parker said.
The beach remained closed Wednesday morning despite an overnight cleanup effort.
Other nearby beaches were being monitored but remain open.
“Beachgoers are advised to avoid Coogee Beach until further notice and not touch the material, while the clean-up and investigations continue,” Dylan Parker said.
Sri Lanka carrier grounds captain after mid-air argument
- Captain clashes with the female copilot over her stepping out without arranging another crew member to accompany him in the cockpit
- Cabin crew had to persuade the captain to let the first officer back into her seat on the Airbus A330
COLOMBO: Sri Lanka’s national airline grounded a captain after he locked out his female copilot when she took a toilet break during a flight from Sydney to Colombo, officials said.
Sri Lanka’s aviation regulator, the Civil Aviation Authority (CAA), had initiated an investigation.
“The airline is fully cooperating with the relevant authorities, and the captain has been grounded pending the outcome of the investigation,” SriLankan Airlines said in a statement.
The captain clashed with the female copilot over her stepping out without arranging another crew member to accompany him in the cockpit, in line with standard operating procedures, an airline source said.
Cabin crew had to persuade the captain to let the first officer back into her seat on the Airbus A330.
The two-pilot aircraft landed without incident.
The cash-strapped carrier has been plagued with chronic delays and shortages of technical crew after it ran out of money to pay for refurbished engines for some of its grounded aircraft.
Successive governments have tried to sell off the debt-laden carrier.
The International Monetary Fund demanded the restructuring of loss-making state enterprises, including SriLankan airlines, when it granted Colombo a $2.9 billion bailout last year.
The bailout came after the South Asian island defaulted on its $46 billion external debt in April 2022 as it faced an unprecedented shortage of foreign exchange needed for essential imports.
With nearly 6,000 staff, SriLankan Airlines is the biggest and most expensive of the cash-haemorrhaging companies that are draining the budget.
However, analysts had warned that finding a company willing to pour money into the carrier would be immensely challenging given its history of interference, mismanagement and turbulent partnerships.
A Hong Kong zoo seeks answers after 9 monkeys die in 2 days
HONG KONG: Hong Kong’s oldest zoo is seeking answers in a monkey medical mystery after nine animals died in two days, including three members of a critically endangered species.
Part of the Hong Kong Zoological and Botanical Gardens has been sealed off and disinfected, and experts have been called in to conduct necropsies and toxicological tests, Hong Kong leader John Lee said in his weekly press briefing Tuesday.
Eight monkeys were found dead on Sunday, and another died Monday after unusual behavior. The deceased animals included a De Brazza’s monkey, a common squirrel monkey, four white-faced sakis and three cotton-top tamarins — a species listed as critically endangered by the International Union for Conservation of Nature.
“Whenever we have any news, if there’s a new development, an announcement should be made as soon as possible, so that everyone can know about the facts,” Lee said.
On Monday, the government held an urgent interdepartmental meeting about the deaths. It said in a statement that another De Brazza’s monkey’s behavior and appetite were found to be unusual, requiring further observation.
But all 80 other animals in the gardens were in normal condition, it added.
Jason Baker, senior vice president of animal rights group PETA Asia, said the deaths raised concerns about a possible outbreak of a zoonotic disease such as monkeypox, which can jump from animals to humans.
“Monkeys in captivity are often exposed to pathogens that cause diseases that can be transmitted to humans, including tuberculosis, Chagas disease, cholera and MRSA,” he said in a statement.
He said the only way to ensure the well-being of animals and prevent the spread of zoonotic diseases is to stop confining them in unnatural environments.
The Hong Kong Zoological and Botanical Gardens — the oldest park in the former British colony — fully opened to the public in 1871. It is a rare urban oasis in the downtown Central district of the financial hub which returned to Chinese rule in 1997.
Boeing will lay off 10% of its employees as a strike by factory workers cripples airplane production
Boeing will lay off 10% of its employees as a strike by factory workers cripples airplane production
- Boeing has lost more than $25 billion since the start of 2019.
Boeing plans to lay off about 10% of its workers in the coming months as it continues to lose money and tries to deal with a strike that is crippling production of the company’s best-selling airline planes.
New CEO Kelly Ortberg told staff in a memo Friday that the job cuts, which could total about 17,000 positions, will include executives, managers and employees.
The company has about 170,000 employees worldwide, many of them working in manufacturing facilities in the states of Washington and South Carolina.
Boeing had already imposed rolling temporary furloughs, but Ortberg said those will be suspended because of the impending layoffs.
The company will delay the rollout of a new plane, the 777X, to 2026 instead of 2025. It will also stop building the cargo version of its 767 jet in 2027 after finishing current orders.
Boeing has lost more than $25 billion since the start of 2019.
About 33,000 union machinists have been on strike since Sept. 14. Two days of talks this week failed to produce a deal, and Boeing filed an unfair-labor-practices charge against the International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers.
As it announced layoffs, Boeing also gave a preliminary report on its third-quarter financial results — and the news is not good for the company.
Boeing said it burned through $1.3 billion in cash during the quarter and lost $9.97 per share. Industry analysts had been expecting the company to lose $1.61 per share in the quarter, according to a FactSet survey, but analysts were likely unaware of some large write-downs that Boeing announced Friday.
The company based in Arlington, Virginia, said it had $10.5 billion in cash and marketable securities on Sept. 30.
The strike has a direct bearing on cash burn because Boeing gets half or more of the price of planes when it delivers them to airline customers. The strike has shut down production of the 737 Max, Boeing's best-selling plane, and 777x and 767s. The company is still making 787s at a nonunion plant in South Carolina.
“Our business is in a difficult position, and it is hard to overstate the challenges we face together,” Ortberg told staff. He said the situation “requires tough decisions and we will have to make structural changes to ensure we can stay competitive and deliver for our customers over the long term.”
