“Google and major publishers have formally called a truce in a seven-year copyright dispute over book scanning. The two sides had already been working closely since a major settlement fell apart in 2011.”
Author: Matthew Westphal
Jailed Palestinian Director Released On Bail Following Hunger Strikes
“The co-founder of Jenin’s Freedom Theatre, a drama group active in the northern West Bank, had been detained in Jericho since 13 May following a wave of arrests by the Palestinian Authority. Charges were not brought against him for more than four months.”
Shanghai Opens Two Enormous New Museums
“On 1 October, the city is marking China’s National Holiday by unveiling the China Art Palace in the mammoth red building that was formerly the China Pavilion in the Expo. On the opposite bank of the Huangpu River, the Power Station of Art was due to open in a converted factory, which during the Expo was the Urban Best Practices Area.”
Pianist Cyprien Katsaris Collapses Mid-Concerto
Suffering what appeared to be a stroke while playing a Liszt work at Berlin’s Konzerthaus on October 1, the 61-year-old lost feeling in his left hand and then collapsed. He is currently in stable condition in a Berlin hospital.
Zoltan Kocsis Recovering After Major Heart Surgery
The veteran pianist, now chief conductor of the Hungarian National Philharmonic, suffered a heart attack on September 21 and was rushed into surgery. He is now slowly recovering and anticipates returning to the podium in time for the Christmas season.
Think Technology Will March Ever Forward? Look At History
“We tend to think of technological evolution as an exponential curve that starts out more-or-less flat in the early Stone Age and accelerates towards the present. But the idea that we are becoming ever more inventive may be an illusion. … In fact, over the whole of human history, we have probably lost more innovations than we now possess.”
Legendary Russian Director Yuri Lyubimov Still Working At 95
He achieved worldwide renown during his 46 years at the helm of Moscow’s Taganka Theater, which he founded in 1964. He now works at the city’s Vakhtangov Theater, where his adaptation of Dostoevsky’s Demons is running this week in honor of his birthday. His next project: Borodin’s opera Prince Igor at the Bolshoi.
Justin Cronin: Literary Star Turns Into Bestselling Vampire Novelist
“He has an M.F.A. from the Iowa Writers’ Workshop and a PEN/Hemingway Award for his book Mary and O’Neil, a meditative novel about love and loss told in a series of short stories. He has never read any of the Twilight books – ‘I’m kind of not the demographic,’ he says. And The Passage is not only, or even primarily, about vampires.”
How Did Rebecca‘s Financing Get So Weird? Commission Payments
“The financially troubled stockbroker who appears to have played a role in the real-life crime drama that scuttled the Broadway musical Rebecca was to receive a commission on the $4.5 million that he was said to be raising for the show, an unusual arrangement in modern theater financing.”
Cecil Beaton As War Photographer
“[The story of Beaton is always hinged on the war as being a transformative moment for him – a move from the frivolities of celebrity glamour to the realities of conflict and destruction. … [Yet] Beaton rarely got too close to combat and his images lack the gruesome realities of battle that you find in Frank Capa’s jarring work. Instead we get icons of war, men and women captured in moments of staged realities.”