Category: today’s top story

“It amounts to the holy grail of intellectual-property enforcement that the recording industry, movie studios and their union and guild workforces have been clamoring for since the George W. Bush administration: The bill grants rights holders the unfettered power to effectively kill websites they believe are dedicated to infringing activities — without needing to get a judge’s permission.”

“We grow the bacteria in a culture that has the substrate we want to eliminate. Effectively trained to eat salt and glue, the bacteria are brushed onto the frescoes and covered with a gel that, when heated with lights, creates humid conditions (perfect for nibbling) and aids cleanup.”

“Jesmyn Ward won the National Book Award for fiction on Wednesday night for “Salvage the Bones,” a haunting tale of the struggles of a 15-year-old pregnant girl as a hurricane bears down on her fictional Gulf Coast town of Bois Sauvage, Miss.”

For a century or more, the Mikhailovsky Theatre in St. Petersburg has been considered a second-tier institution, far below the level of its neighbor the Mariinsky or the Bolshoi in Moscow. Now oligarch Vladimir Kekhman, who made his fortune importing fruit, is pouring millions into the company, funding renovations and high-profile hires such as choreographer Nacho Duato and the Bolshoi Ballet’s star couple.

“This was not supposed to be possible. Sibelius’s Seventh Symphony was completed in 1924. He worked on an Eighth, for quite some time in fact, without anything material appearing (in spite of considerable public expectation, on both sides of the Atlantic), and then in the 1940s, something happened that should have put a full stop to the matter” – a bonfire.

“There will be no revisionist happy ending in the coming Broadway production of The Gershwins’ Porgy and Bess. A new scene, in which the title characters have a final emotional encounter meant to deepen their love story, has been dropped.”

A virus destroyed almost all of a German cellist’s memory for facts and experiences – but he hasn’t forgotten music, or how to hear new pieces. Researcheds think musical memory might be stored in an entirely different part of the brain.

“Tuesday night Dallas Symphony Board Chairman Blaine Nelson told a group of top donors that based on current revenue and expenses, the symphony will be insolvent within 90 days.” The orchestra has subsequently released a new business plan with fewer classical and pops performances.

“Jack Widdowson, 19, suffered serious back and neck injuries in the assault in Cardiff and it is feared that even if he recovers he may never dance again. South Wales police said on Wednesday that a 23-year-old man had been arrested … on suspicion of assault and robbery.”

“The director Julie Taymor, a key creator of the Broadway musical Spider-Man: Turn Off the Dark, sued the producers of that $75 million show in federal court on Tuesday, claiming that they were profiting from her creative contributions without compensating her.”