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Netflix’s Wednesday season 2 cast clicks into gear with Westworld star addition as Apple’s Neuromancer series finds its lead

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There’s good news for fans of William Gibson’s fictional AI Neuromancer and Wednesday, the ongoing tales of Charles Addams’ creepy and kooky family. Both shows’ already impressive casts have just announced some equally impressive new additions. 

First up, BAFTA award-nominated Callum Turner from Masters of the Air and The Boys in the Boat is going to be appearing in Neuromancer. Based on Gibson’s book of the same name, it’s a 10-part Apple TV Plus series following a largely broken top-tier hacker called Case (Turner). Case stumbles into a tangled web of electronic espionage and corporate skulduggery with suitably thrilling results, and the source novel won stacks of literary awards and helped define what would come to be known as cyberpunk. 

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Bisnis Industri

Apple TV+ offers best quality movies and show, survey finds

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Apple TV+ may not pack in as many movies and TV shows as other major streaming platforms, but what it showcases rates highest for quality on IMDb, according to a new report.

Apple TV+ tops quality ratings in 19 genre categories on the movie-database site, including drama, comedy, action, biography and children’s content. But its relatively small catalogue helps keep it from ranking high on value for its price.

Apple TV+ top all streamers for quality content per IMDb ratings

Apple TV+ offers best-quality content rated by IMDb but also has the smallest library of content among several major streamers, a detailed survey from Self Financial found.

Other streamers the survey rated: Netflix, Amazon Prime Video, Disney+ (including Hulu), Max (formerly HBO Max), Paramount+ and Peacock.

These findings echo what JustWatch found in averaging critics’ scores of content in mid-2023. Apple TV+ has the best stuff, not the most stuff. And its rise based on that strategy continues.

Top quality, low quantity

Apple TV+ offers top quality content
Apple TV+ tops the list for quality content.
Photo: Self Financial

Apple TV+ movies and series averaged a rating of 7.01 out of 10 (7.3/10 for family content), topping Self’s list for the third year in a row.

In fact, Apple TV+ came out on top in 19 of 27 genre categories. But in 11 of those, its rating carried an asterisk because it offers fewer than 15 titles in each of them.

And to that point, Apple TV+’s catalogue remains small compared to services like Amazon, Netflix and Hulu. The biggest, Amazon Prime Video, pushes 14,511 titles (it acquired MGM in 2022, for one thing). Netflix carries 6,643. And Apple TV+? Just 277, according to the survey.

What about value?

The Self survey also examined value offered for the cost of service. If found that Amazon’s Prime Video, which has surpassed Netlix in size but hasn’t increased prices like other services have, takes the value crown.

Prime Video offers the most movies rated “Excellent” on IMDb per $1 spent, at 42 (and 557 rated “Good”). However, Netflix still rates higheset for TV value, offering 60 “Excellent” shows and 241 “Good” shows for every $1.

Apple TV+ offers best quality including 4K content

streaming services quantity of content
When it comes to quanity of content, Apple TV+ brings up the rear.
Photo: Self Financial

With a much smaller catalogue, Apple TV+ rated lower on value, understandably. It simply has few titles per dollar spent across the board.

However, the service took top honors for having the top audience ratings for its 4K movies and TV series (7.18/10). The hit comedy Ted Lasso accounts for some of that, with its 8.8 rating.

For comparison, Netflix comes in at a 4K content rating of 6.53. Prime Video comes in last at 5.93.

Read more about the survey and its findings.

Watch the good stuff on Apple TV+

Apple TV+  is available by subscription for $9.99 with a seven-day free trial. You can also get it via any tier of the Apple One subscription bundle. For a limited time, customers who purchase and activate a new iPhone, iPad, Apple TV, Mac or iPod touch can enjoy three months of Apple TV+ for free.

After launching in November 2019, “Apple TV+ became the first all-original streaming service to launch around the world, and has premiered more original hits and received more award recognitions faster than any other streaming service. To date, Apple Original films, documentaries and series have been honored with 471 wins and 2,090 award nominations and counting,” the service said.

In addition to award-winning movies and TV shows (including breakout soccer comedy Ted Lasso), Apple TV+ offers a variety of documentaries, dramas, comedies, kids shows and more.

Watch on Apple TV

 



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Bisnis Industri

Manhunt crime-drama finds a big audience on Apple TV+

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Manhunt, the Apple TV+ historical true-crime drama about the search for the assassin of Abraham Lincoln, immediately shot to near the top of the popularity charts of two different ratings services.

And other series and films from Apple are also performing well with audiences.

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True-crime series Manhunt dramatizes the hunt for Abraham Lincoln’s killer

Apple TV+ has found success with historical dramas recently. Both Masters of the Air and Killers of the Flower Moon are doing particularly well. And Manhunt joined the list of hits with its March 15 launch.

The series ranks No. 4 on ReelGood’s list of Top 10 TV shows on streaming during the week ending March 20. And it’s at No. 5 on JustWatch‘s list of top streaming shows for the week ending March 17.

Estimates from companies like JustWatch and Reelgood are necessary because streaming services rarely reveal how many people watch their offerings.

History tells us that stage actor John Wilkes Booth (played in the Apple TV+ series by Anthony Boyle) went on the run for 12 days after he shot Lincoln in the back of the head at Ford’s Theatre in 1865.

Apple says of its new show:

Manhunt is a conspiracy thriller about one of the best known but least understood crimes in history, the astonishing story of the hunt for John Wilkes Booth in the aftermath of Abraham Lincoln’s assassination.”

The seven-part series is based on the bestselling nonfiction book Manhunt: The 12-Day Chase for Lincoln’s Killer.

It also stars Emmy-winner Tobias Menzies (The Crown, Game of Thrones) as Edwin Stanton, Lincoln’s secretary of war, who led efforts to capture Booth and his co-conspirators.

The first three episodes are available to watch now on Apple TV+. The fourth will premiere next week.

Watch on Apple TV

Masters of the Air stays popular

The Apple TV+ WWII drama Masters of the Air continues to draw in a big audience as well. The series stays on the popularity charts week after week.

It offers an in-depth look at the “bomber boys” in the U.S. Army Air Force squadrons that took the war to Hitler via brutal and harrowingly dangerous bombing campaigns through skies filled with exploding flak and increasingly deadly Nazi fighter planes.

There’s clearly an audience for this type of show. ReelGood puts the historical drama at No. 7 on its list of most popular TV shows on streaming last week. And it sits at No. 6 on JustWatch‘s list of top streaming shows.

All nine episodes of Masters of the Air are available to watch now on Apple TV+. That includes the season finale, which premiered March 15.

Watch on Apple TV

Killers of the Flower Moon is just as popular

Martin Scorsese’s Killers of the Flower Moon began drawing a crowd of viewers when it hit the Apple TV+ streaming service in mid-January, and that continues.

The historical crime drama scored 10 Oscar nominations — including for Best Picture —  which surely helped keep it on the top 10 lists of popular films. For the most recent week, JustWatch puts it at No. 6 and ReelGood had it at No. 9.

Killers of the Flower Moon is available to stream now.

Watch on Apple TV

Watch now on Apple TV+

Watching Manhunt or any of these other series or films comes with a subscription to Apple TV+. The service is $9.99 per month with a seven-day free trial. You can also get it via any tier of the Apple One subscription bundle.

And Apple’s streaming video service also includes much more, of course. There are comedies, musicals, children’s shows, nature documentaries, etc.

Want more tips on what to watch on Apple TV+? Read our guide to the 15 best shows on Apple TV+.



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Life Style

More than 4,000 plastic chemicals are hazardous, report finds

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Individually plastic wrapped fruit and vegetables on a black background in Tokyo, Japan.

Plastic wrappers are known to leach some chemicals into food.Credit: Carl Court/Getty

After a year of trawling through scientific reports and national regulatory databases, scientists funded by the Norwegian Research Council have compiled a list of more than 16,000 ‘plastic chemicals’ — compounds found in plastics or thought to be used in them, including raw ingredients and additives such as stabilizers and colourants.

Of these, at least 4,200 are “persistent, bioaccumulative, mobile and/or toxic”, the group found. That “is quite staggering”, says lead author Martin Wagner, an environmental toxicologist at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology in Trondheim. The group also discovered that hazard data were unavailable for more than 10,000 chemicals, and for more than 9,000 there was no publicly available information about which plastics they are used in.

Solid information on all these chemicals is difficult to come by, in part because industry doesn’t always share proprietary information, Wagner says. That makes the effort to compile the known data all the more important, researchers say. “This is the most comprehensive report to date,” says Bethanie Carney Almroth, an ecotoxicologist at the University of Gothenburg in Sweden, who was not involved with the effort. “The numbers presented are jarring.”

The report was released on 14 March, in time for the next round of negotiations for a United Nations treaty on global plastic pollution. Scientists have been campaigning for the treaty, which deals with all aspects of plastic production and waste management, to include a list of plastic polymers and chemicals of concern — some of which are known to leach into food, water and the environment, with impacts for human and ecosystem health. Discussions regarding the treaty continue in Ottawa next month and are scheduled to conclude in Busan, South Korea, in December.

The report notes that although nearly 1,000 concerning chemicals are regulated by global efforts such as the Stockholm Convention on Persistent Organic Pollutants, more than 3,600 are not. The authors assign these chemicals to a ‘red list’ that should be regulated, they argue. “The message is very clear,” says Wagner, who is a member of the Scientists’ Coalition for an Effective Plastics Treaty, a grass-roots group that has formed to advise the treaty process. “Something needs to happen,” he adds, although the report’s authors decline to be proscriptive about whether treaty delegates should put in place bans or other regulatory measures.

The Plastics Industry Association, a group based in Washington DC that aims to “protect, promote and grow the plastics industry”, did not respond to Nature’s request for comment. A statement from Kimberly Wise, vice-president of regulatory and technical affairs at the American Chemistry Council (ACC), a trade group in Washington DC representing US chemical companies, says: “Plastic additives provide many important benefits that enhance the function and durability of plastic products, enabling us to do more with less….Unfortunately, today’s report seeks to advance a hazard framework that ignores real-world exposures and paints an incomplete picture for regulators and the public.”

Pervasive hazards

Many attempts to regulate chemicals, such as the 1976 US Toxic Substances Control Act, take a risk-based approach, evaluating a chemical by taking into account both its hazards and the likelihood of exposure to it. The authors of the report instead use a more precautionary approach that looks only at hazards — in part because plastics are so pervasive that evaluating exposure would be logistically problematic. “This is necessary,” agrees Miriam Diamond, an environmental chemist at the University of Toronto, Canada.

Wagner was surprised by how many chemicals of concern the team found, and how prevalent they are. In the past, many researchers and others have argued that most chemicals of concern were “legacy compounds”, no longer really used in plastics production, he says. But the team found convincing evidence that plenty are still in use. “We found more than 400 chemicals of concern across all major polymer types. That was surprising,” Wagner adds.

Given the huge number of chemicals of concern and the lack of data for many, the team divides them into 15 groups for priority action. These include phthalates (often used to make polyvinyl chloride more flexible) and bisphenols (used to make durable polycarbonate).

The report also recommends getting companies to be more transparent about what is in their plastics, to fill in many of the information holes. “It is not possible to mitigate harm, to the environment or to humans, given these knowledge gaps, and it is completely irresponsible [for policymakers] to allow this to continue,” says Carney Almroth.

“We are encouraged that today’s report emphasizes the need for greater transparency,” says Wise in the ACC statement. “The International Council of Chemical Associations (ICCA) supports these efforts and is already developing an additives database and risk assessment framework to provide critical information to regulators around the globe.”

Scientists can help, Wagner says, by finding out about the hazards of chemicals with data gaps and performing meta-analyses on well-studied compounds. The world also needs better analytical techniques, he says — such as improved bioassays that can measure the effect of a chemical on living organisms.

It’s unclear whether the plastics treaty will be completed in December. So far, the negotiations have been hampered by a few petrochemical states that are resisting strong regulation of plastics production, Wagner says. “We’re at a stalemate, I’d say,” he adds. “My view is, the evidence is very clear. Governments just need to get their act together.”

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Politics

COVID vaccines are safe for pregnant women and babies, study finds

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Landmark study contradicts misinformation about brain development and conditions like autism in children.

The COVID vaccine is safe to administer during pregnancy, reports UC San Francisco in an important finding on the safety of the vaccine in infants — despite widespread fear and misinformation.

The study, published in JAMA Pediatrics, is the first scientific inquiry into whether infants are at increased risk of neurodevelopmental impairments as a result of maternal vaccination.

The landmark study of more than 2,200 infants from across the country found that in utero exposure to the vaccine caused no abnormal delays when the infants were tested at 12 months and again at 18 months.

“This is a very reassuring finding — pregnant women have been facing unanswered questions around COVID vaccinations for several years,” said first author Eleni Jaswa, MD, MSc, a reproductive endocrinologist and fertility specialist at UCSF Health, noting the investigation started in April 2020. She is also an assistant professor in the UCSF Department of Obstetrics, Gynecology & Reproductive Sciences.

First meaningful evidence of maternal vaccination safety during pregnancy

Although pregnant women are considered at increased risk of severe illness with COVID-19, some chose not to get the COVID vaccine due to safety concerns around potential risks to their unborn children.

Some 34% of the participants in the study were vaccinated in the first trimester, about 45% in the second trimester, and nearly 21% in the third trimester. They were asked to complete a 30-item questionnaire assessing whether their infants performed expected milestones.

After adjusting for such factors as maternal age, race, ethnicity, education, income and maternal depression, the researchers found no difference in the risk of infant neurodevelopment at either 12 months or 18 months. They noted an increased risk of delay among male infants at 12 months but the difference was not observed at 18 months.

The study is ongoing.

“Understandably, there’s been concern about the potential impact of maternal vaccination on offspring,” said senior author Heather Huddleston, MD, a UCSF Health reproductive endocrinologist and director of the UCSF Polycystic Ovary Syndrome Clinic (PCOS).

“Despite early safety data as well as recommendations from physicians and health organizations, vaccine hesitancy is still preventing universal use,” she said. “To this day, misinformation continues to abound. People are concerned about such issues as brain development and conditions like autism in children. This is the first meaningful evidence into the safety of vaccination from the standpoint of early offspring neurodevelopment.”

Co-authors: All from UCSF, the paper’s co-authors are Marcelle Cedars, MD; Karla Lindquist, PhD; Somer Bishop, PhD; Young-Shin Kim, MD, MPH, PhD; Amy Kaing, MD; Mary Prahl, MD; Stephanie Gaw, MD, PhD; Jamie Corley, BS; Elena Hoskin, MS; Yoon Jae Cho, MD; and Elizabeth Rogers, MD.

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Good news for coral reef restoration efforts: Study finds ‘full recovery’ of reef growth within four years

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While the majority of the world’s reefs are now under threat or even damaged potentially beyond repair, a new study reported in the journal Current Biology on March 8 offers some encouraging news: efforts to restore coral reefs not only increase coral cover, but they can also bring back important ecosystem functions, and surprisingly fast.

“We found that restored coral reefs can grow at the same speed as healthy coral reefs just four years after coral transplantation,” says Ines Lange of University of Exeter, UK. “This means that they provide lots of habitat for marine life and efficiently protect the adjacent island from wave energy and erosion.”

“The speed of recovery that we saw was incredible,” she says. “We did not expect a full recovery of reef framework production after only four years.”

The work by Lange and her international colleagues represents the first reef carbonate budget trajectories at any coral restoration sites. The study was conducted at the Mars Coral Reef Restoration Programme in South Sulawesi, Indonesia, one of the largest restoration projects in the world. The project relies on transplanting corals and adding substrate to restore reefs badly damaged by blast fishing 30 or 40 years ago. Without human intervention, those reefs had shown no signs of recovering due to the presence of loose coral rubble that prevents young coral larvae from surviving.

The restoration effort has added a continuous network of sand-coated steel structures to consolidate the rubble and offer a structure for transplanting coral fragments. The question was whether and how quickly such restored sites would recover. To find out, the researchers measured the carbonate budgets of 12 sites that had been restored at different times, up to four years ago.

“Corals constantly add calcium carbonate to the reef framework while some fishes and sea urchins erode it away, so calculating the overall carbonate budget basically tells you if the reef as a whole is growing or shrinking,” Lange says. “Positive reef growth is important to keep up with sea-level rise, protect coastlines from storms and erosion, and provide habitat for reef animals.”

They wanted to know how long it takes to bring back healthy reef growth and its associated functions. Their data show that rapid growth of transplanted corals supports the recovery of coral cover and carbonate production. In fact, just four years in, the net carbonate budget had tripled such that it matched that at healthy control sites.

There were some important differences, however. Because branched corals had been transplanted preferentially over other corals, the makeup of the restored reef communities differs. The researchers say those differences “may affect habitat provision for some marine species and resilience to future heatwaves, as branching corals are more sensitive to bleaching.”

While longer-term study is necessary to see what happens over time and under stress, the findings show that active management actions can help to boost the resilience of reefs and bring back important ecosystem functions that are critical for marine life and local communities in relatively short periods of time, according to the researchers. They’re hopeful that, over time, restored reefs will naturally recruit a more diverse mix of coral species. However, they note that what will happen in any given location around the world will depend on many factors, including environmental conditions and restoration techniques.

“As is so often the case, there is no one-size-fits-all solution, but we hope that this positive example can be used as inspiration for other reef restoration projects around the world,” Lange says.

“These results give us the encouragement that if we can rapidly reduce emissions and stabilize the climate, we have effective tools to help regrow functioning coral reefs,” says Tim Lamont, a study co-author at the Lancaster Environment Centre, Lancaster University, UK.

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A Mississippi Jury Finds Cops Justified in 2017 Deadly Shooting After Going to Incorrect Residence.

A jury in Mississippi has decided not to pursue a civil lawsuit against two police officers who fatally shot a man while carrying out an execution of a warrant at the wrong location. The action was brought by the deceased’s family.

Ismael Lopez’s death in 2017 at the hands of Zachary Durden and Samuel Maze, both of whom were employed by the Southaven Police Department, was ruled by a federal jury in Oxford on Thursday to not represent a violation of Lopez’s constitutional rights as a result of the incident. Following a hearing that lasted for four days, the judge found in favor of Claudia Linares, Lopez’s wife, who had claimed that she was entitled to $20 million in damages.

As the defense attorney Murray Wells described to WREG-TV, the jury deliberated and came to the conclusion that the amount of force used by Officers Durden and Maze was not excessive after hearing all of the evidence.

Lopez was a Mexican citizen who was living in the United States illegally. He was also subject to deportation orders and criminal charges for unlawfully holding guns. Previously, the city of Southaven argued that the individual did not have any civil rights that needed to be infringed upon.

This assertion was debunked by a judgement from a court in the year 2020, which said that the Constitution protects “all persons.”

After determining in June that neither the city of Southaven nor the former police chief of Southaven, Steve Pirtle, were liable for the officers’ actions in accordance with federal law, Senior United States District Judge Michael P. Mills dismissed the case that was brought against both of them.

On July 24, 2017, according to the Mississippi Bureau of Investigation, investigators allegedly went to Lopez and Linares’ trailer and knocked on the door while they were asleep inside. When the police officers attempted to serve a warrant for domestic violence on a neighbor on the other side of the street, they got the addresses confused.

Officers did not produce identification when they were questioned by state investigators, although they did confess that they had knocked on the door. According to the officers, Lopez was standing outside at the time when the door opened and his dog ran out. After that, the suspect reportedly pointed a weapon through the gap. First Maze shot the dog, and then Durden opened fire on Lopez, all of which occurred in short succession.

A third officer who arrived on the scene told investigators that he heard Durden urge Lopez many times to put the pistol down before he fired his firearm on the suspect.

There is no video of the incident that has been verified.

The 41-year-old man was fatally wounded more than two meters away from the front door when he was shot in the back of the head. He passed dead as a result of his injuries. He was reportedly trying to evade the authorities’ attempts to apprehend him.

The lawyers for Lopez disputed that their client had pointed the gun at the police, but sadly, Lopez was unable to make it to the hospital before he died suddenly. The firearm was located around five and a half feet away from the deceased individual’s body, and neither his fingerprints nor his DNA were on the weapon. The fact that they saw Maze shoot the dog led them to believe that Durden was the one who was guilty for Lopez’s death.

When state investigators arrived at the home, they found Lopez’s body in the middle of the living room with his hands tied behind his back. He had been strangled. On the couch was a weapon that had not been loaded.

Following their investigation, the members of the state grand jury decided not to bring any charges against anybody involved in the shooting.

Darren Musselwhite, the mayor of Southaven, has issued a statement in which he expresses his regret at Lopez’s passing and his contentment with the results of the inquiry.

According to Musselwhite, this judgment reinforces our earlier judgement that our officers behaved properly in the face of a serious threat of lethal force. Because of this, we have been there for them for the last six years, and now that their hardship is over, we are rejoicing in their success.