After which he moved back to Tanzania from Germany, and became a member of parliament and held various positions as minister.

(meta data) TITLE: Tanzanian Affairs » OBITUARIES

A veteran of the independence struggle in Tanzania and one of its first cabinet ministers, Ambassador PAUL BOMANI (80) died on April 1.

He had been Chancellor of the University of Dar es Salaam since 1993 and was also chairman of Tanzania Breweries Ltd and Tanzania Distilleries Ltd.

He obtained a diploma at Loughborough College in Leicester in 1954 and later, a Masters Degree at John Hopkins University in the USA.

His first post was as Minister of Natural Resources and Co-operative Development in 1960.

He was subsequently Ambassador to the United States and Minister for Mineral Resources.

But perhaps his greatest achievement was to mastermind the establishment of a huge and highly successful cooperative movement in the Lake Victoria Region in the 1950's which became responsible for marketing the rapidly increasing cotton crop.

President Mkapa led hundreds of mourners at the burial at Capri Point cemetery in Mwanza.

Good Governance Minister in the Zanzibar Government and former diplomat, AHMED HASSAN DIRIA (68) died on March 14 in a German hospital.

He first joined the government as a Labour Officer in Zanzibar.

After the Zanzibar Revolution in 1964, he was appointed Area Commissioner for Pemba.

He became Tanzania's ambassador to Zaire before he was transferred to West Germany and later to Egypt, Japan and India.

He was appointed Minister for Information and Broadcasting in 1989, a position he held up to 1994.

He was then moved to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and International Co-operation.

He was a staunch defender of the Union between the mainland and Zanzibar.

Sir JAMES FARQUHARSON KBE (101) who died on 17th February, dedicated virtually his whole working life to the development of railways in Africa.

He came to Tanganyika in 1937 and remained there through the war years as District Engineer and then Chief Engineer of the Tanganyikan part of the then the East African Railways and Harbours (EAR&H).

It was in Dar es Salaam that he began the work that pleased him most, the expansion of railway systems.

Expansions completed during this period were the Mpanda line in western Tanzania (131 miles) the southern line (168 miles) built to serve the UK Government's disastrous groundnut scheme and the Singida line (65 miles).

In 1957 he became General Manager of the EAR&H and became involved in establishing a link line between the central and northern lines in Tanzania (425 miles).

This was a difficult time for labour relations as the new trade unions flexed their muscles.

Farquharson was a hardliner in such matters, believing that the railway staff enjoyed better pay and conditions than most other workers.

He faced out several strikes, walking through the picket lines to his office; a newspaper report from the time quoted a union leader advising that there was to be a great party when the General Manager retired.

The split of the railway system in East Africa into its three component parts saddened Farquharson but did not daunt his belief that the railways could still play a key role in the country's development (Thank you Hugh Leslie for sending this from The Times – Editor).

GREVILLE FREEMAN-GRENVILLE (86) who died in February, was described in the Times obituary as 'a gentleman-historian of the old school' and a fearless campaigner to preserve the archaeological remains of Africa and the Middle East.

Amongst the 26 books he wrote were 'The Medieval History of the Coast of Tanganyika' (1962) and 'The East African coast: select documents from the first to the earlier 19th century'.

His interest in the copper coins that were minted at port cities offered the possibility that their dynastic history could be reconstructed from their surviving chronicles.

For many years he was the only person able to identify the coins of the Sultans of Kilwa and Mogadishu.

He frequently pointed to the importance of Kilwa as a site for research.

MARY PEAKE (104) served as a teacher and as a School Supervisor at the UMCA's Diocese of Masasi for 32 years from 1937.

When Trevor Huddleston became Bishop in 1960 he transferred Mary, by then aged 60, to the less physically arduous work as a teacher at the boys' secondary school at Chidya.

In 1969 she moved to Dar es Salaam to teach English at the new St. Mark's Theological College.

Her dining rooms served as a refectory for other expatriate church workers, not to mention a constant stream of visitors to what became known as 'Mary's Guest House'.

During her final years from 1995 she was cared for by the Tanzanian sisters of the CMS next to the cathedral at Ilala – from Rev. Canon Paul R Hardy.

(Thank you Mary Punt for sending this on – Editor).

BRUCE RONALDSON (87) who died on December 2 2004, was a District Commissioner in Tanganyika after the Second World War.

He took a particularly close interest in sport and captained Tanzania at cricket.

He also trained John Akhwari, who entered the marathon at the Mexico Olympics.

Akhwari fell during the race and finished hours after the rest of the field but became an overnight celebrity and symbol of the Olympic spirit when he told reporters: "My country did not send me 7,000 miles to start this race.

In 1961 Ronaldson moved to Britain and became Company Secretary of Oxfam – The Times.

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Ahmed Hassan Diria (July 13, 1937 – March 13, 2005) was a Tanzanian politician and diplomat. He was born in Raha Leo, Zanzibar and was educated in local primary and secondary schools. He started working in government service in 1954, taking a break from 1958 to 1961 to be educated at the College of Philosophy in Ghana. Following the Zanzibar Revolution of 1964, he was appointed the area commissioner for Pemba. He remained in this position until 1965, when he joined the Tanzanian foreign service. He remained in it until 1989, serving as ambassador at various times to Zaire, West Germany, Egypt, Japan and India.


Elsa D'Silva served as the Vice President, Network Planning at Kingfisher Airlines where she headed the Network Planning & Charters department.

(meta data) TITLE: Making cities safer ~ The Red Elephant Foundation

begins from within: whether it is by choice or by chance.

call to action might be a life-changing incident, or perhaps, even a chance at

For Elsa D'Silva, the call to action was ingrained: it was just

I worked in the aviation industry for the last 20

However when my company went bankrupt, I decided to

make a career switch to the social sector as I really wanted to use my experience

My friends and I found that there was a gap in

the system where every woman's experience of sexual harassment was not being

Official statistics do not represent the actual issue and we as

society only get outraged when someone gets raped or brutally attacked.

why does a woman have to experience this to get society's attention?

change it and make information more readily available?

Secondly, as a woman who had risen to the top

of the career ladder (my last portfolio was Vice President Network Planning) I

realised that not many women make it to the top.

How do I empower women and mentor them so

that they could achieve their potential?

- addressing the safety needs as well as mentoring women to achieve their

In 2012, I was fortunate to have been selected for

the India programme of the Swedish Institute on CSR

met my cofounders Saloni Malhotra and Surya Velamuri.

programme we decided to work on women empowerment and more importantly on

safety as the rape in Delhi took place shortly after the programme

to do something concrete and not just pay lip service to the issue.

We started off as being an online platform but soon

realised that not many people were willing to share their story direct on the

A lot of them did not even know what sexual harassment was and they

So we started on ground campaigns and workshops

to explain the issue, educate women on the topic, the laws and the recourses

We also encountered a lot of reluctance to report.

However once they hear other people's stories they

are able to identify similar experiences in their life and are more open to

Most often, the question we are asked is what action we

I believe the first step is to collect this

Once you have the data you can then devise

ground in Lal Kuan, Dwarka, Noida, Gurgaon, Nepal, Cameroon and Mumbai to use

Initially people were skeptical about verification of the data.

is a new method of collecting data and not everything can be verified.

to explain that we don't work on individual cases but on larger trends which

If you see our data set for Delhi, you can see clear

For instance, in Connaught Place - touching and groping

which probably has to do with it being commercial in nature and crowded, Rohini

on the other hand has chain snatching which is because of its residential

Interventions can then be designed accordingly.

require more police patrolling while an area like Lal Kuan which has staring as

an issue would require education and awareness.

walls at Lal Kuan along with Shilo Shiv Suleiman of the Fearless Collective as

It became a talking point in the community.

We also made it a point to go offline to reach out to

So we conduct workshops for different demographics tailored to suit

individual needs - for children, youth, parents, corporate employees, and community

We have conducted workshops for over 2500 people in Delhi, Mumbai,

We are working with partners - NGOs, Police in Goa, Citizen

to collect data as well as use the data in the community to bring

For instance, in Nepal, we helped SEEW make a case for Pink

buses (women only transportation) as women were being harassed and abused in

We concentrated initially on Delhi and collected a huge

dataset which showed clear trends in different locations

make the point for further need to collect more data so that effective

interventions can be designed at the ground level.

We have law students working in Dwarka, college students in

Delhi University and high school students in Noida working to make small

Now, we have a lot of organisations asking us

So I guess we are doing something right.

Women have been conditioned to accept sexual abuse and

harassment as part of their daily routine

talk to their daughters more openly about it so that the young generation will

feel empowered to confront their perpetrator and prevent the abuse.

lot of help available, we need to use it.

In our workshops we notice a lot of people don't know that there

Hopefully we are giving them information that they can

It is very important to support each other.

We cannot be mute bystanders but be change makers in our own small

My dream is that one day there will be no need for

But till then, I would like that women and

people in general take a more active interest in their own safety and that of

their little ring fenced area that they frequent (be it their home or place of

If we take an active interest in making sure that area is safe, it will

be a big step in overall safety which is a basic need.

other areas like empowering women to become financially independent through education,


In 1861, he was elected an officer in a Georgia military unit but was not allowed to serve because of his youth; in 1863, he went to England to secure ships for blockade running.

(meta data) TITLE: STRAUS - JewishEncyclopedia.com

The unedited full-text of the 1906 Jewish Encyclopedia

Isidor Straus:Nathan Straus:Oscar Solomon Straus:

American family, originally from Otterberg, in the Rhenish Palatinate.

The earliest member known was one Lazarus, born in the first half of the eighteenth century, whose son Jacob Lazarus was known also as Jacques Lazare.

Lazarus was elected in the department of Mont Tonnerre for the Assembly of Jewish Notables convened by Napoleon in Paris July 26, 1806, preliminary to the establishment of the French Sanhedrin.

His son Isaac took the name of Straus in the year 1808, when Napoleon passed the decree ordering all Alsatian Jews to adopt family names.

Isaac's son Lazarus was possessed of considerable means, made in both agricultural and commercial pursuits.

Being of liberal tendencies, he was involved in the revolutionary movement of 1848; he emigrated to the United States in 1854 and settled in Talbotton, Ga.

In 1865 he established in New York a successful pottery and glassware business, in conducting which he was joined in 1872 by his sons.

It was due to his instigation that Kayserling undertook the researches in Spain resulting in his work on Christopher Columbus.

Merchant; eldest son of Lazarus Straus; born at Otterberg Feb. 6, 1845

He accompanied his parents to the United States in 1854, and was educated at Collinsworth Institute.

He was elected lieutenant of a Georgia company at the opening of the Civil war, but was not allowed to serve on account of his youth.

In 1863 he went to England to secure ships for blockade-running.

In 1865 he went with his father to New York, where they organized the firm of L. Straus & Son; in 1888 he entered the firm of R. H. Macy & Company, and in 1892 that of Abraham & Straus, Brooklyn.

He was elected a member of the Fifty-third Congress in 1892, and was instrumental in inducing President Cleveland to call the extra session of Congress which repealed the Sherman Act.

Straus has been identified with the various movements in behalf of fiscal and tariff reform, and was a delegate to the Sound Money Convention held at Indianapolis.

He was one of the founders of the Educational Alliance (of which he is now [1905] president), is a director of several banks and financial institutions, and is a prominent member of the Board of Trade and vice-president of the Chamber of Commerce.

The Washington and Lee University conferred upon him the degree of LL.D. in 1905.

Merchant; second son of Lazarus Straus; born at Otterberg Jan. 31, 1848.

With his family he went to the United States in 1854.

It settled at Talbotton, Ga., where he attended school; afterward he was trained at Packard's Business College, New York.

He joined his father in the firm of L. Straus & Son in 1872, and his brother Isidor in the firm of R. H. Macy & Company.

Straus has shown considerable interest in municipal affairs, becoming a member of the New York Forest Preserve Board and park commissioner of New York in 1893.

He was offered the nomination of mayor of New York in 1894, and was appointed president of the Board of Health of New York in 1898.

He originated in 1890, and has since maintained at his own expense, a system for the distribution of sterilized milk to the poor of New York city which has been shown by the report of the Health Department of New York to have saved many infant lives.

He contributed also to the establishment of the same system in Chicago and Philadelphia.

He likewise originated and maintained during the coal strike in the winter of 1903-4 a system of depots for the distribution of coal to the poor of New York.

Straus has shown considerable interest in trotting.

Merchant and diplomat; third son of Lazarus Straus; born at Otterberg Dec. 23, 1850.

He went with his family to Talbotton, Ga., in 1854, and removed with it to Columbus, Ga., in 1863, and to New York in 1865.

He was educated at Columbia Grammar School and Columbia College, graduating in 1871.

Afterward he attended the Columbia Law School, graduating from that institution in 1873.

He began the practise of law in the firm of Hudson & Straus, which afterward became Sterne, Straus & Thompson, the senior member being Simon Sterne.

The strain of a large practise in commercial and railway cases told upon Straus's health, and in Jan., 1881, he retired from law and entered his father's firm.

Straus was active in the campaign which resulted in the election of President Cleveland in 1884, and was appointed minister plenipotentiary to Turkey in 1887 at the suggestion of Henry Ward Beecher.

Straus did excellent work while at Constantinople, especially in obtaining recognition of the American schools and colleges in the Turkish dominion.

He was again appointed minister plenipotentiary to Turkey (1897-1900) by President McKinley, and was enabled by his influence with the sultan to help reconcile the Mohammedan inhabitants of the Sulu Archipelago in the Philippines to the recognition of the suzerainty of the United States.

Copyright by Pierre Mac Donald.Oscar Solomon Straus.

Straus has performed much valuable public service as member of various commissions, as, for instance, those appointed to investigate.

New York public schools and to improve institutions for the insane.

He was president of the National Primary League in 1895, and of the American Social Science Association from 1899 to 1903, as well as of the National Conference of Capital and Labor held in 1901.

He was instrumental in founding the National Civic Federation, of which he has been vice-president since 1891.

In 1902, on the death of ex-President Harrison, Straus was appointed by President Roosevelt to succeed him as a member of the Permanent Court of Arbitration at The Hague, this high honor being given him in recognition of his diplomatic service and knowledge of international relations.

Straus has written much for the magazines, has delivered lectures at Yale and Harvard universities, and, since 1903,has lectured annually upon international law before the United States Naval War College at Annapolis.

He is the author of "The Origin of the Republican Form of Government in the United States" (New York, 1885), and "Roger Williams, the Pioneer of Religious Liberty" (ib. 1894).

He has been a very active student of American Jewish history, and was one of the founders, and the first president, of the American Jewish Historical Society; he resigned in 1898.

Straus is a trustee of the Baron de Hirsch Fund.

The honorary degrees of L.H.D. (Brown University) and LL.D. (Columbia University) have been conferred upon him.

In 1906 he was appointed Secretary of the Department of Commerce and Labor by President Roosevelt.

Bibliography: Appleton's Cyclo. of Am. Biog.; Who's Who in America, 1905; New York Times, Dec. 3, 1893.A. J.

Isidor Straus was born into a Jewish family in Otterberg in the former Palatinate, then ruled by the Kingdom of Bavaria. He was the first of five children of Lazarus Straus (1809–1898) and his second wife Sara (1823–1876). His siblings were Hermine (1846–1922), Nathan (1848–1931), Jakob Otto (1849–1851) and Oscar Solomon Straus (1850–1926). In 1854 he and his family immigrated to the United States, following his father, Lazarus, who immigrated two years before. They settled first in Columbus, Georgia, and then lived in Talbotton, Georgia, where their house still exists today. He was preparing to go to United States Military Academy at West Point when the outbreak of the American Civil War prevented him from doing so .


"Jack the Writer" is the fourth episode of the first season of the American situation comedy "30 Rock", which aired on November 1, 2006 on the NBC network in the United States, and on November 1, 2007 in the United Kingdom.

(meta data) TITLE: Watch this: EastEnders | Britz | Kath and Kim | 30 Rock | Culture | The Guardian

(meta data) AUTHOR: https://www.theguardian.com/profile/annapickard

(meta data) PUBLISHER: https://www.facebook.com/theguardian

(meta data) PUBLISHED DATETIME: 2007-10-31T21:42:58-0400

Available for everyone, funded by readers

First published on Wed 31 Oct 2007 21.42 EDT

In case anyone hasn't been keeping up at the back there: the bride's been biffing the groom's father (whose father is at death's door), the groom's pregnant mother-in-law has been the recent recipient of the ardent attentions of the bride's brother, who has just found out about the existing inter-family fumbles (an' 'e ain't 'appy 'bahht it) and some helpful bridesmaid is videoing it all.

Worth seeing if only for Sean's "mad, bad and dangerous to know" look, which he manages to pull for an hour straight, and makes him look like the Gruffalo having a poo.

The concluding part of Peter Kosminsky's thriller runs concurrently to last night's but focuses on sister Nasima, in a stunning central performance by Manjinder Virk.

Where the first part was measured and quiet, here the distressing journey from politicised medical student to radicalised terrorist is a painful and shocking one.

It's hard to make the A+B=Massacre argument palatable, but this is television drama well made, and this half of the serial almost stands alone without last night's piece of the puzzle.

In this first episode of series four, Brett decides that what is needed to put the bubbles back into his and Kim's marital bath is a romantic holiday at a luxury resort.

His mother-in-law decides that it's just what she and Kel also need.

Non-fans will continue to be unable to see the appeal; fans will giggle and clap and annoy their colleagues by repeating the catchphrases in crap Aussie accents for days to come.

Four episodes in, and this backstage sitcom just gets funnier.

While the main storyline concerns try-hard new vice president of Television and Microwave Oven Programming, Alec Baldwin, deciding to join the writers in the writing room to "help" them, several sub-plots and scores of one-liners dance underneath - including head writer Liz Lemon tackling the difficult subject of innappropriate officewear with a near-naked junior: "You need to wear a bra," she finally decrees, solemnly.

They stay up on their own, look!" replies the intern, bouncing.


The band's earlier songs, recorded on two- and four-track equipment, needed to be reworked into a multitrack format that is essential in providing feedback to players.

(meta data) TITLE: The Beatles' 'Rock Band': How The Fab Four Went Digital | Billboard

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# The Beatles' 'Rock Band': How The Fab Four Went Digital

Beatles Boost Music Game Sales To New High

Paul DeGooyer is tired -- for good reason.

It's about two weeks before the release of MTV's "The Beatles: Rock Band," and DeGooyer, senior VP of electronic games and music for MTV Networks Music Group, has been traveling to New York, Boston, Los Angeles and London since 2007 to work on the project.

He's conducted delicate negotiations with surviving Beatles Paul McCartney and Ringo Starr, along with Yoko Ono Lennon and Olivia Harrison; hammered out essential licensing deals with executives at Sony/ATV and EMI Music, which treat the Beatles catalog with almost reverent care, and overseen the development of new technologies to meet the high expectations of all involved.

"It's been a bit of a blur," he says, the fatigue obvious in his voice as he speaks from his New York office.

To all involved -- MTV, its game development subsidiary Harmonix, EMI, Sony/ATV, the remaining band members and the families of all -- the end result of all this time, effort and frustration is much more than just a videogame.

It's the latest contribution to the hallowed cannon of what many consider to be the world's greatest band.

"It's really about a new way to play with the Beatles' music than it is a new 'Rock Band' game," DeGooyer says with quiet humility.

"If we did our jobs right, it is an authentic piece of the Beatles' catalog of work, and that sounds kind of crazy because it's a videogame.

This point became crystal clear to DeGooyer when, after first pitching the concept to the band and surviving family members two years ago, they insisted on including music from every stage of the Beatles' career -- something that wasn't as easy as it sounds, given the primitive way the band recorded its early work.

On "Taxman," for example, the drums and guitar were recorded on the same track.

But "Rock Band" needs to devote a separate audio track to each instrument, so MTV had to figure out how to split those tracks into separate files in order to include the earlier songs in the game.

Failure would mean losing the band's blessing -- and thus the project.

Thankfully, MTV and Harmonix were able to enlist the help of Giles Martin, son of Beatles producer George Martin, who had access to the Beatles' master recordings and had just cataloged them while working on the Grammy Award-winning "Love" project for Cirque du Soleil.

He developed a filtering method that split these instruments into separate tracks.

With that hurdle passed, MTV could have just plowed forward with the simple act of licensing.

Instead the team brought in Martin Bandier and Peter Brodsky, Sony/ATV's CEO and executive VP of business and legal affairs, respectively; and Cynthia Sexton, executive VP of global brand partnerships at EMI, into the planning and development process along with the Apple Corps shareholders.

"While it was critical to work with Apple and the Beatles, we didn't want to take for granted the other rights holders would go along with them," DeGooyer says.

"They all needed to understand exactly what we were doing and have input.

When you have that many rights holders involved in a catalog, it's not obvious that their interests align at all points."

The results of this process are evident in the game.

In addition to the 45 songs from the band's catalog -- more from one act than any other music-based game yet released -- the title brings a level of detail not yet seen in a music-based game.

Each band member is animated in striking detail, down to the way their eyes and hair move while playing.

Scenes of the Beatles' performances in Liverpool's Cavern Club and New York's Shea Stadium include the actual crowd noise from each venue.

The game's re-creation of the Beatles recording in Abbey Road's famed Studio 2 includes never-before-heard banter among the band as it recorded its later work.

Trivia about the act is included as unlockable bonus material, along with previously unreleased photos, audio and video.

Perhaps most remarkably, the Beatles will allow fans to buy at least a portion of their music in digital form as extra downloadable content for the game, starting with "Abbey Road" Oct. 20 and followed by "Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band" and "Rubber Soul" in November and December, respectively.

"Everyone realized doing this game was really a significant event in bringing the Beatles into the 21st century," Sony/ATV's Bandier says.

"This is an enormous opportunity, because for a moment in time, it will be the only legitimate place where you can get the music in a digital form."

Legacy aside, the Beatles hope the game will generate profits for them as well.

And the band will make money on the music included in the game, but also on likeness and for the downloadable music being made available later.

The many versions of the game include a $250 deluxe edition with plastic signed replicas of McCartney's Hofner bass guitar and Starr's Ludwig drums (George Harrison's Gretsch Duo Jet and John Lennon's Rickenbacker will be sold separately for $100 each).

That's $90 more than the $160 "value" package that includes basic "Rock Band" instruments.

There's also a $60 disc-only version for consumers who have existing "Rock Band" or "Guitar Hero" instruments.

Wedbush Morgan Securities videogame analyst Michael Pachter estimates the game will sell 5 million copies by year's end, with the disc-only version moving 3.5 million and the deluxe and standard versions selling 1.5 million between them.

For the Beatles, the biggest upside comes from the sales of the deluxe version.

MTV won't make much money on that package, but the company enjoys healthy margins on the disc-only version, as well as downloadable content.

There isn't a shortage of speculation about how much MTV paid for the rights to the Beatles catalog, but sources say the design and motion-capture work was just as expensive as the licensing costs in the eight-figure budget.

Without directly addressing the game's costs, MTV's DeGooyer says the deal is structured so both parties stand to profit.

"The deal was carefully constructed as a partnership with the Beatles and Apple Corps," he says, "and that's borne out in both the creative of the game as well as the business deal behind it."

MTV hopes the game will drive subsequent sales of downloadable Beatles content and convert Beatles buyers to the "Rock Band" franchise.

Beatles content won't be available for existing versions of "Rock Band," nor will "Rock Band" music be playable on the Beatles game.

But the plastic instruments that come with the Beatles game will work with other versions of "Rock Band," which customers can buy as a disc.

Each downloadable Beatles album will cost $17, with individual songs going for $2.

MTV typically keeps about 70% of the price of downloadable content purchased through "Rock Band."

Although the Beatles are believed to have received a better deal, this is still a very profitable business.

The entire music-game category has suffered a 46% decline in year-over-year revenue through July of this year, according to the NPD Group, causing some to question whether music games are just a passing fad.

But much of this decline is due to sales migrating from expensive first-time hardware purchases to software sales that consist of new music either in the form of downloadable content or expansion discs.

And NPD's figures don't include the revenue made from downloadable content.

The future of music games depends on attracting newcomers, which is why the Beatles game is so important to MTV.

"It has to be for older people," Wedbush Morgan's Pachter says.

"They're sitting around waiting for something to come along that appeals to them.

So they're 40-something people that have looked at 'Guitar Hero' but are not sure why they want to learn Aerosmith or Metallica songs.

They see this and think, 'I can get into this.'

The game's developers went to great lengths to appeal to this demographic by removing many of the "game" elements from the Beatles title.

While "Rock Band" has players earning points for accuracy and being rewarded with virtual money to spend on such band essentials as a van or instruments, the Beatles game is fully experiential.

There's no "goal" or "boss" or even points.

The Beatles music should attract new gamers, and the way the band used the title to tell its story could also inspire others artists to get creative in this new medium.

From their formation in 1959 to their 1970 breakup, the Beatles always experimented with whatever medium was driving rock music at the time.

Their rise to fame was driven by concerts, their greatest success came from studio albums.

And now, despite having skipped digital downloading, the Fab Four stand poised to master yet another format -- interactive media.

"I look at the musical landscape and say, 'There's the Beatles and everybody else,' " Bandier says.

"I don't think you can find another artist that you can use a chronology of their life and events in the same way."

Even so, the Beatles will almost certainly inspire other bands to take the plunge into the world of gaming.

Pearl Jam plans to release its new album as downloadable "Rock Band" content the same day it arrives in stores.

And the new Rock Band Network allows any band to create and sell music as it likes through MTV's system.

"It would be great if people look at this a year from now and say, 'I want to play my favorite song in this format,' " DeGooyer says.

"And chances are, a lot of people's favorite songs will be on the 'Rock Band' platform."

(meta data) TITLE:  How the Beatles got ready to conquer the world - again | Music | The Observer

(meta data) AUTHOR: http://www.theguardian.com/profile/simongarfield

(meta data) PUBLISHED DATETIME: 2009-09-05

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# How the Beatles got ready to conquer the world - again

With the release of music game The Beatles: Rock Band, the world's biggest group are going to find a whole new audience.

Here, Paul McCartney and Yoko Ono tell why they agreed to allow the Beatles to become interactive

Paul McCartney, George Harrison, Ringo Starr and John Lennon in a scene from The Beatles: Rock Band.

There are many ways you can get to see the youthful Paul McCartney these days – YouTube, BBC documentaries, the short films that come with the Beatles' newly remastered CDs – but the best way is the Paul McCartney Soundcheck Package.

McCartney demonstrated this a few weeks ago at Fenway Park, home of the Boston Red Sox.

It was 4pm, and there were about 80 people in the stadium.

A few of these were lighting and sound engineers, but most were competition winners from local radio stations and fans who had paid extra for a VIP experience.

McCartney smiled a lot as he played songs from Hamburg (Matchbox, Honey Don't), songs from the Cavern (All My Loving), songs from Top of the Pops (C Moon, Let 'Em In) and songs from his schooldays (Leaning on a Lamppost).

The years fell away, and his performance was staggeringly good.

A woman in our tiny gathering unfurled a multicoloured sign which read, "Please can you sign my Hofner?", but McCartney was far too busy having fun.

Before he sang Leaning on a Lamppost, he explained that George Harrison had given him his ukulele, and before he left the stage he said: "This is a new one" as he began singing Yesterday.

When it was over he had a little chat with his band and security men, and wandered around.

Catering staff said: "How ya doin', Sir Paul?" as he passed, and he said: "Good."

He posed for a photograph with a young fan in a Beatles T-shirt.

He came up to me and said: "I saw you were taking notes…," and I said I had been.

One of my notes read: "Two TV monitors, one by microphone at front stage, other further back by piano stool.

The words I saw: He blew his mind out in a car/He didn't notice that the lights had changed."

McCartney invited me to his trailer behind the stage.

His girlfriend, Nancy Shevell, was preparing iced tea in a large wine glass, and McCartney was sitting with his feet curled under him on a sofa.

His dyed brown hair was not as unnerving in reality as it can appear in photographs.

The trailer looked like a Middle Eastern souk – rugs on the walls, rich embroidery, sweet candles burning on low tables.

I told him how much I had enjoyed the previous evening's show (the first of two nights at the same venue), and he said that he was aware he had found his groove again.

McCartney is 67, and his creativity and thumbs-up enthusiasm continue to surpass all reasonable expectations, but he learned long ago to face universal truths.

Last night's concert had been a mixture of very popular music from half a century, but it was clear that the one thing his fans loved above everything else was songs by the Beatles.

They whooped during a few Wings numbers (especially for the synchronised fireworks at the loud bits on Live and Let Die), but nothing approached the delight they showed for Sgt Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band, Hey Jude, Get Back, Let It Be and The Long and Winding Road.

Above all, his fans went nuts for Yesterday, and they will go nuts for Yesterday for ever.

McCartney is happy playing the old stuff.

As he explained to the Boston Globe that week, "It's like a comedian.

You can tell any joke you want, but the ones that they laugh at are probably the ones you should keep in the act."

There may be several predictable reasons for McCartney's newly energised enthusiasms – the fresh girlfriend, the great reception for his tour – but there is also an unconventional one.

His old band, the most important in the history of music, is about to be reborn through what was once the most reviled of art forms and the sad province of adolescent dead-enders – the videogame.

The Beatles: Rock Band is released this week amid expectation comparable to the release of The White Album.

There isn't any new music, but there is a new way of experiencing it, and a new audience ready to receive it.

Now a player may not only hear the youthful McCartney, but become him.

And when he or she becomes bored with Paul, there's always John, George or Ringo.

In this way, the adventure of pop music is being reinvented.

"We've made the Beatles music," says McCartney as he sips his tea.

But then what happens is that somebody will come up with a suggestion…"

The suggestion for a videogame came from George Harrison's son Dhani in the winter of 2006, when he met the head of MTV on holiday in the Caribbean.

MTV had just bought Harmonix, the leading music videogames company, based in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

"So we go, 'What is it? Why?'" McCartney continues.

"Because one thing we don't want to do is just do naff ideas."

McCartney, Ringo Starr, Olivia Harrison and Yoko Ono (known collectively and disconcertingly as "the Shareholders") began to meet people from Harmonix the following year, and McCartney remembers a meeting at Abbey Road in the spring of 2007 in which Harmonix staff demonstrated what they had done for veteran rockers Metallica.

There were "a couple of grown-ups standing looking very foolish with these little plastic guitars playing to a screen", he says.

"And we're going, 'Yeah, all right… It just looks like a really bad band.'

They said: 'We really can do a great one with the Beatles, and we'll show you.'

They said: 'Look, the thing is, if we get it right, these things are very, very popular.'

And we go, 'Yeah, well, we know, because our kids and the young people we know do it.'"

"The scepticism is in order not to make a terrible mistake," he explained.

"We go, 'no, no,' and we're really down on it, and they've really got to prove themselves.

We won't go, 'Oh, that's nice… go on boys, you just do it.'

But then they did come back one day and they had something.

They were playing our songs, they had some visuals that were half-working, and the penny dropped.

We went, 'You know what? This could be pretty cool.'"

The Beatles: Rock Band works on the same principles as other interactive music games.

You insert a disc into a PlayStation 3, Xbox 360 or Wii console, you strap on a replica guitar or sit at plastic drums, and you play along to a popular song on the television screen.

The song is programmed to respond to your performance: the more tunefully you sing, or the more accurately you press the buttons on the fretboard and hit the drums, the more points you get.

The screen displays not only the lyrics, but a long sequence of cues to tell you when to hit or strum, with the coloured notes on the screen corresponding to buttons on your guitar.

It is the digital version of the pub or campfire singalong, the 21st-century upgrade of the Victorian family parlour concert.

If you play well, you get mellifluous music that sounds like your heroes.

If you sing out of tune, your friends may walk out on you.

The Beatles: Rock Band takes things further.

There are 45 songs to choose from, soon to be augmented by downloadable albums (in the following months you can get complete versions of Abbey Road, Sgt Pepper's and Rubber Soul).

There are vocal harmonies, a complex innovation.

There is very lovely animation that plays before the music begins and in the background after you start playing.

There are six venues at which the songs are played (Cavern Club, Ed Sullivan Theatre, Shea Stadium, Budokan, Abbey Road and the Apple Corps Savile Row Rooftop).

There is an elaborate system of gathering points to unlock rare audio and visual material from the Apple archives.

And then there is the significant fact that the Beatles have never involved themselves in anything like this before.

"They've done it very respectfully, and so they should," McCartney tells me.

"Not just because you should respect the Beatles, but mainly because there are a lot of people out there who are going to notice if you don't

I ask McCartney whether he's played it yet.

I'm kind of, you know, looking forward to playing it.

So the idea of pushing buttons and things in time is kind of slightly intriguing for me, but it's actually more interesting to do a show like this…"

He motions to the stage beyond his trailer, where his support band MGMT are playing to a swelling audience.

I wonder what John and George would have made of The Beatles: Rock Band.

"I think they would have been amused," McCartney says.

"I think they would have seen the point of it.

For us, let's remember that the central thing is our music is getting played.

I'm sure John and George would have thought, 'Hey, what a clever idea.'"

Two miles from McCartney's show, the people who made the game are talking it up with pride and amazement.

Harmonix is on Massachusetts Avenue in Cambridge, just down the road from Harvard.

The office sits between a pharmacy and a Get in Shape For Women studio, a series of rooms that resembles something closer to a student dorm than a company valued at hundreds of millions of dollars.

(MTV bought Harmonix in 2006 for $175m, but has since paid almost $500m in additional bonuses.)

In one of the rooms, decorated with a large framed poster of the Beatles, Alex Rigopulos, the co-founder, and Paul DeGooyer, senior vice president of MTV's games division, are discussing their hopes for what may be their most lucrative game to date.

"Everyone knows of the Beatles," Rigopulos says, "but there's this whole generation for whom the music isn't personal, it isn't close to them.

And for that younger audience we're delivering this incredible music in the most impactful way imaginable.

Rigopulos and DeGooyer are aware of their coup: now that the biggest band of all have entered the arena, it has not only created a whole new series of marketing possibilities, but has legitimised their industry.

It marks the precise point at which music videogames come of age.

Harmonix began in 1995 as a concept at MIT's Media Lab.

Its first clients were theme parks, and it entered the domestic market with a computer mouse that could also serve as a musical instrument on primitive games.

Rock Band was only launched at the end of 2007, but already its retail sales in north America have exceeded $1bn, and gamers have downloaded more than 40 million songs for $1.99 each.

As the company's co-founder Eran Egozy said recently, the delivery of rock music has just entered a new phase.

There was vinyl, the cassette, the CD, digital downloads and now there is the downloadable digital interactive computer track.

"It's a launching point for how we see the future of music evolving."

Guitar Hero, made by Activision but originally developed by Harmonix, was launched in 2005 and has since sold more than 25 million copies, making it the market leader.

But with the Beatles in its stable, Harmonix believes it has pulled off the ultimate coup.

Songs by the Rolling Stones and the Who were already on Rock Band, but neither of those bands were controlled by the byzantine structure that is Apple Corps Ltd, the company that has handled all of the Beatles' creative activity since 1968.

But Apple has always had a canny eye for the innovative and the lucrative, and a neat way of relaunching the Beatles for each new generation (the last time it was the exhaustive Anthology project in 1995).

The main problem was not the concept but the technicalities.

"Apple said to us, 'We don't even want to talk about this any more unless you come up with a solution to separating out some of the earlier songs,'" DeGooyer remembers.

Rock Band requires each of the main instruments to be played in isolation, but on the Beatles early hits the drums and guitars would often be recorded on the same piece of tape.

Dhani Harrison believed that the CIA would have some sort of technology to separate them, but in the end a solution was proffered by a company in Cambridge, England, called Cedar.

Apple would not permit the Beatles' master recordings to leave the studio vaults, much less travel to Boston, so once the tracks had been separated out they then had to be encrypted.

In the summer of 2007, Harmonix received five songs to play with: I Want to Hold Your Hand, Helter Skelter, Taxman, Revolution and Here Comes the Sun.

The plan was for Harmonix to show how the game might work, and to conceive a rough idea of how an animated Beatles might look on screen.

"Apple gave us some guidelines to stick to," says Josh Randall, Harmonix's creative director.

"They said it needs to feel analogue, it needs to feel British, and even though it's a videogame, it shouldn't feel computery.

But we should also try to make something new – not just go back and rehash the old stuff."

In the end, the visual team produced a presentation based around Day Tripper, which was the first the Beatles saw of the game when they gathered at Abbey Road in summer 2008.

"From each of them there were just tons and tons of ideas," says Rigopulos.

"They said: 'Oh, you could do this, you could do that, you could do this

"We did get very hands-on," McCartney says.

"We said: 'Show us everything – how does it work?'

They said: 'If you attain a degree of efficiency you'll then get points, and your prize will be trivia facts about the Beatles.'

So they showed me one and I went, 'Oh, that's wrong.'

"Some things you just do 'em: somebody's doing a book or something – we'll help them, but it's not our responsibility.

But this is going to go out in our name, so we really have to be careful."

According to Rigopulos, McCartney asked a lot of pointed questions.

There were some ideas we had about mixing and matching times and places that intentionally disregarded historical accuracy, and he put his stake in the ground.

We said: 'Maybe the rooftop concert can have songs performed that actually you guys didn't perform on the rooftop.'

There are some things we can play with, but some aspects of the design we should be true to.'"

In the game, the Beatles are animated in imaginative ways.

Given the band's history with Yellow Submarine, this will not be unfamiliar territory for the older player, but it caused a lot of heartache at Harmonix.

McCartney is a keen fan of modern animation, not least because he watches films with his grandchildren and the five-year-old daughter he shares with Heather Mills.

He felt that the early work was not hugely impressive.

They said: 'No, eyes are very hard to do….'

Then: 'Wait a minute, John's too wooden…'

There's this great thing, Arthur and the Invisibles, the Luc Besson film.'

So I started to give them things to aim at."

Josh Randall says that all the Beatles and their wives were heavily involved.

Talking on the phone from Henley-on-Thames, Olivia Harrison will tell me later that she thought there was a problem with the proportions in early drawings of George's face.

"I started to look at photos to see where they went wrong.

I thought they could capture those eyes, and get that little bit of a crooked smile."

She had played the game with Dhani in LA and was eager to have another go in private.

"It makes you appreciate music a little deeper.

We don't have a band, but the music exists, and I don't see any harm in letting people have another way of experiencing it."

It was Yoko Ono who apparently caused the most problems with the game's designers.

Alex Rigopulos remembers one visit to their office during which Ono reminded them how windy the rooftop concert was, necessitating changes to the band's hair.

There were other corrections: "She would tell our animation guys how John would approach the mic, how heavy his eyes would be, giving them quite a hard time.

But at the end she said to them, 'It's OK – I'm an artist too.'"

From Tokyo, by email, Yoko later responds to my questions.

"We, especially Olivia and I, were very caring about how the images of the Beatles were represented, as well as the music," she says.

"The Harmonix people were keen to involve us.

I think they were really happy that we wanted to integrate ourselves so much into the project."

She hasn't had time to play the game, but promises to "explore it properly" when she finishes promoting her new album.

"As a parent myself, I am very aware of the highly educational aspect of this game," she says.

"It will inspire and encourage the young generation to be intimately involved in music making.

It will be another musical revolution created by the Beatles to make our planet a planet of music."

The last key figure in the making of the game was Giles Martin, the son of George Martin.

His remixing of the Beatles hits for the Love project (the Beatles collaboration with Cirque du Soleil in Las Vegas) had earned him the trust of the band, and he acted as the middleman between Apple and Harmonix, helping to select tracks for the game and create new precise endings for songs that had previously faded out.

He too was initially suspicious of the idea.

"I was thinking, 'Am I making a Beatles Zippo lighter or a Beatles plastic tray?'

I was snooty about it at first – 'Oh God, we're just making a game.'

There's part of me, being a musician, that wants to say, 'Why don't you go and play a proper guitar and not play a plastic one?'

But what I do like about it is that it makes us listen to the music again and again, in the way that we used to when we bought albums.

As opposed to having 3,000 songs on your iPod which you flick through with obsessive button pressing.

These days we do hear a lot of music, but we don't actually listen to it very often."

Giles Martin told me he was surprised, when he tried to play I Want to Hold Your Hand, at just how complex the bass line was.

At the end of my first day at Harmonix, I entered the company's Star Chamber, where the games are tested.

It is also the room where staff come to relax after a hard day's struggle with Ringo's cymbal crashes and George's eyelids.

Shortly before I was joined by publicity and other staff for a "concert", I picked up a replica of McCartney's Hofner bass propped up on a leather sofa.

This had been designed on a slightly reduced scale by Matthew Reineck, who also makes real guitars.

The Hofner and the scaled-down models of Lennon's Rickenbacker, Harrison's Gretsch and Ringo's Ludwig drums were plastic, but they felt OK in the hand.

Reineck explained that McCartney's bass had been made with great attention to detail (Hofner had supplied a special sample of the wood grain), but there were also variations.

Unlike the original, the guitar was designed for a right-handed player, and it came with a "whammy bar" to enable nice sustain effects and ensure "backwards compatibility" with other Rock Band games.

"McCartney reviewed it halfway through the design process," Reineck said, "and he didn't have an issue with it."

The Hofner will come bundled in a big box with Ringo's drums and a microphone with stand, and will retail for £180.

The Rickenbacker and the Gretsch will each cost £90, while the game just on its own (requiring the use of older Rock Band instruments) will cost either £40 or £50 depending on the console.

As Reineck was talking, various people arrived in the room and strapped on their wireless guitars.

One of them inserted a disk in the machine, and apologised for a slight technical glitch: the Rickenbacker had run out of batteries, a dilemma the Fab Four had rarely encountered.

I was surprised how much visual information is displayed on the screen all at once – it was like a musical satnav.

It helps if you have a big TV; in fact, it is hard to see how the game could have existed before we all went mad for massive flat screens.

I was asked what song I fancied and I plumped for Sgt Pepper's, but as a singer.

One man took pity on me and set the difficulty level to Easy.

(The game has five levels: Easy, Medium, Hard, Expert and No Fail, the latter a sort of training-wheels option to ensure the cloth-eared are not discouraged.)

The music began, that familiar chugging.

I began singing – that familiar awful sound.

But I was keen, and it was less fraught than regular karaoke (you don't have to be drunk for a start), and I became a part of the act I'd known for all these years.

I appeared to get the right words at the right time, and when the song ended (this took a while, as of course it segued into With a Little Help From My Friends) the screen showed I had scored 99 out of 100.

Vaguely preposterous, but I had made my small contribution to unlocking a rare photograph of the Beatles in the studio with information about the first time they all sported moustaches, and once I had enough of these I would unlock some rare audio of the Beatles goading each other about messing up an intro.

Glowing with success, I had a shot at Get Back.

Not so good; only 97%; the rare photograph of George Harrison playing sitar on Magical Mystery Tour would have to wait.

Overall, I wasn't so sure this was a good hobby for a grown man.

I asked Olivia Harrison what George would have made of it.

"I hate to say, but I know I'm his biggest fan and biggest critic, and I'm happy with it.

I think they did a great job, and if I didn't like it I would feel very uncomfortable."

Yoko told me: "People are always asking me what John would have thought of our new technology – email being our standard way of communication now etc.

He was always for new ideas to give inspiration and encouragement to the world.

He would have been excited about the Rock Band concept, and very happy with how the music and the visuals of the Beatles were represented."

Given the likely success of Rock Band and the remastered catalogue, Marty Bandier, the chief executive of Sony/ATV publishing, said: "The fourth quarter will belong to the Beatles."

Backstage at Fenway Park, Paul McCartney is 90 minutes away from another night on stage.

He is explaining how the Beatles got their look.

"When I was a kid, I went with my parents and my brother to Butlins Holiday Camp at Pwllheli.

I was by the swimming pool, and we were such a funny family, a little bit Alan Bennett.

From a door in one of the buildings, I see four guys walk out in a line.

They all had grey crew-neck sweaters, tartan twat hats (as we used to call them, like the Kangols everyone wears now), tartan shorts, and a rolled white towel under their arm.

They just walked, and I thought, 'Holy shit!'

Then I went to see them in the talent show, and they wore grey zoot suits, and they were from Gateshead, and they won.

So when we came to be the Beatles, I said: 'You know what?' and I told everyone about this epiphany.

And so we ended up in suits and we all wore the same."

This was an unfamiliar yarn, and I was aware that McCartney had a reputation for reinterpreting history.

Or perhaps his memory had become sharper as he aged.

I said that I had always thought the look was Brian Epstein's idea.

He explained that the suits may have been Epstein's thing, as it was the only way they could get the better-paid gigs, but McCartney thought the idea of all looking the same was probably his own.

"When we showed up at a gig, we would come in like this [regular street clothes], and then we'd get the boots and the suits, and suddenly we were the four-headed monster, and it was a very exciting feeling.

And we'd become more than the sum of the parts.

Thirty-five thousand people had an epiphany of their own.

The concert also marked another Beatles milestone, for as McCartney sang Got to Get You Into My Life, from 1966, the vast screen behind him showed an animated film of the Beatles from 2009.

"The pictures you saw there are from this new Beatles Rock Band thing," he said.

His fans clapped and whooped, because they had been presented with a new opportunity, the ability to recreate tonight's event at home.

Batteries required, unsurpassed creative genius optional.

"The idea is to make the Beatles sound as good as they can," says Allan Rouse, talking at Abbey Road.

He is the co-ordinator in charge of the digital remastering of the Beatles' back catalogue.

This means that the Fabs' 12 albums, plus Magical Mystery Tour, which became part of the core catalogue when the first Beatles CDs were released in 1987, now boast a brighter, fuller sound.

Some bad edits, dropouts and vocal pops are gone; but the odd cough, John muttering "fucking hell" during Hey Jude - this sort of thing remains.

"De-noising" - removing analogue tape hiss - has only been applied to five of a total of 525 minutes worth of music.

The release of the remastered CDs coincides with the arrival of Rock Band - "because," says Rouse, "the Beatles are for everyone, not just for people in the past."

The next wave of music-themed computer games due in time for Christmas includes:

Endorsed by Eminem and Jay-Z, right, this has you scratching and mixing tunes by the likes of Bowie and the Beastie Boys.

Released on 27 October, it will retail at around £90, including turntable-shaped controller.

Will allow any artist, whether established or up and coming, to create their own music into tracks for the Rock Band game, and make money from it.

Once approved, they'll be sold on XBox Live.

Launches soon - check out http://creators.rockband.com.

EMI, Warners and Universal are opening up their back catalogues to this Wii-based competitor to Sony's SingStar.

Allows four people to sing along to the likes of Lily Allen.

It's one of the great unanswered questions of pop: why no Beatles on iTunes?

"We've been keen to do this for a while," Paul McCartney told OMM.

I refer to them as Terracotta but I believe it's Terra Firma.

And he explained that in the deal that we want, they feel exposed.

If [digitised Beatles music] gets out, if one employee decides to take it home and wap it on to the internet, we would have the right to say, 'Now you recompense us for that.'

George Harrison's son Dhani said recently that there is a disagreement over the pricing of Beatles songs; there are hints too that the band have considered setting up their own download store.

The official response from EMI is: "We would love to see the Beatles' music on sale in digital stores."

The Beatles: Rock Band and the Beatles' remastered albums are out on 9 September.

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How the Beatles got ready to conquer the world - again

This article appeared on p18 of the Observer Music Monthly section of the Observer

at 19.06 EDT on Saturday 5 September 2009.

It was last modified at 12.11 EDT on Wednesday 10 July 2013.

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2015 IIHF Ice Hockey U20 World Championship Division II Group AIn Tallinn, Estonia, 7-13 December 2014Participants: Great Britain, Lithuania, Netherlands, Estonia, Romania, Korea

2015 IIHF Ice Hockey U20 World Championship Division II Group BIn Granada, Spain, 13-19 December 2014Participants: Croatia, Spain, Serbia, Australia, Iceland, Belgium

2015 IIHF Ice Hockey U20 World Championship Division IIIIn Dunedin, New Zealand, 19-25 January 2015Participants: China, New Zealand, Mexico, Turkey, South Africa, Bulgaria

2015 IIHF Ice Hockey U18 World ChampionshipIn Zug and Lucerne, Switzerland, 16-26 April

A: USA, Sweden, Russia, Slovakia, GermanyGroup B: Czech Republic, Canada, Finland, Switzerland, Latvia

2015 IIHF Ice Hockey U18 World Championship Division I Group AIn Debrecen, Hungary, 12-18 April 2015Participants: Denmark, Norway, Kazakhstan, Belarus, France, Hungary

2015 IIHF Ice Hockey U18 World Championship Division I Group BIn Maribor, Slovenia, 12-18 April 2015Participants: Italy, Austria, Slovenia, Japan, Ukraine, Lithuania

2015 IIHF Ice Hockey U18 World Championship Division II Group AIn Tallinn, Estonia, 22-28 March 2015Participants: Poland, Korea, Croatia, Netherlands, Great Britain, Estonia

2015 IIHF Ice Hockey U18 World Championship Division II Group BIn Belgrade or Novi Sad, Serbia, 15-23 March 2015Participants: Romania, Spain, Serbia, Belgium, China, Australia

2015 IIHF Ice Hockey U18 World Championship Division III Group AIn Taipei City, Chinese Taipei, 22-28 March 2015Participants: Iceland, Israel, Chinese Taipei, Bulgaria, Mexico, South Africa

2015 IIHF Ice Hockey U18 World Championship Division III Group BIn Auckland, New Zealand, 22-24 March 2015Participants: New Zealand, Turkey, Hong Kong

2015 IIHF Ice Hockey Women's World ChampionshipIn Malmo, Sweden, 28 March - 4 April 2015Group A: USA, Canada, Russia, FinlandGroup B: Germany, Switzerland, Sweden, CZE/JPN*

2015 IIHF Ice Hockey Women's World Championship Division I Group AIn Rouen, France, 12-18 April 2015Participants: CZE/JPN*, Norway, Denmark, France, Austria, Latvia*Qualification Series to be played in autumn 2014

2015 IIHF Ice Hockey Women's World Championship Division I Group BIn Beijing, China, 6-12 April 2015Participants: Slovakia, China, Hungary, Netherlands, DPR Korea, Italy

2015 IIHF Ice Hockey Women's World Championship Division II Group AIn Dumfries, Great Britain, 30 March - 5 April 2015Participants: Kazakhstan, Great Britain, Korea, Poland, New Zealand, Croatia

2015 IIHF Ice Hockey Women's World Championship Division II Group BIn Jaca or Logrono, Spain, 11-17 March 2015Participants: Australia, Slovenia, Spain, Iceland, Belgium, Mexico

2015 IIHF Ice Hockey Women's World Championship Division II Group B QualificationIn Hong Kong, Hong Kong, 18-21 February 2015Participants: Turkey, South Africa, Bulgaria, Hong Kong

2015 IIHF Ice Hockey U18 Women's World ChampionshipIn the USA, city TBA, 5-12 January 2015Group

A: Canada, USA, Czech Republic, RussiaGroup B: Finland, Sweden, Japan, Switzerland

2015 IIHF Ice Hockey U18 Women's World Championship Division IIn Vaujany, France, 4-10 January 2015Participants: Hungary, France, Germany, Norway, Slovakia, Austria

2015 IIHF Ice Hockey U18 Women's World Championship Division I QualificationHost TBDParticipants: Great Britain, Poland, China, Italy, Kazakhstan, Denmark

Official Partners 2014 IIHF Ice Hockey World Championship

The 2015 IIHF Women's World Championship Division I was an international Ice hockey tournament run by the International Ice Hockey Federation.


The singer later revealed that because of the dye, her hair started to fall out, so she got a boy's haircut and wore a wig.

(meta data) TITLE: Marina and the Diamonds: 'I killed Electra Heart with sleeping pills' | Music | The Guardian

(meta data) AUTHOR: https://www.theguardian.com/profile/michaelcragg

(meta data) PUBLISHER: https://www.facebook.com/theguardian

(meta data) PUBLISHED DATETIME: 2015-01-30T07:11:51-0500

Available for everyone, funded by readers

# Marina and the Diamonds: 'I killed Electra Heart with sleeping pills'

The Welsh singer-songwriter talks about murdering her alter-ego, the trouble with kisses, and her latest switch from pop to indie

Last modified on Thu 22 Feb 2018 06.31 EST

Marina Diamandis: 'Am I feminist though?

But even with feminism it's not about being independent the whole time.'

Can you tell me about the last dream you had involving a famous person?

I'm thinking of a specific one but I can't possibly say ... it involved quite a young boy!

It was about six months ago, but I absolutely can't tell you about it.

Most of the time I have really boring dreams, like two nights ago I dreamed I made a really good pancake.

I used to have lots of dreams about female pop stars and being really good friends with them.

What does the term "pop star" mean to you?

Someone who is immersed in popular culture and is relevant to it.

So it's not really got anything to do with the genre of music they create.

I would say she's a pop artist because the connotations of "star" are something trashy and celebrity.

There's a bit of a split with me; some people would see me like that and some wouldn't.

It depends when they followed me from, the first album or the second.

The second album got me a lot more pop fans.

I feel like a pop artist, but I do love pop stars.

The media spotlight changes the definition between a pop star and a pop artist, I think.

Do you think it's better to know too much or too little in the pop industry?

Definitely better to know too much, because then you're under no illusions about what you're doing.

But it must be nice also to just sort of float along not questioning certain things.

Oh it would be lovely, don't get me wrong!

I feel like the business side of my brain and the artistic side of my brain are very equal.

I don't forget things and I'm not in a dream world, so I can't be any other way.

With Electra Heart (1), it did hinder me because the aim with that was to be a straight-up pop star.

So when I was promoting it I realised, OK, this is why I don't like being a pop star because people assume you don't know anything and you don't make your own music.

I saw that change as soon as I dyed my hair blond and created music that had a different production style.

It was fascinating but it made me think: "I'm not going to do this again."

It was really fun while it lasted but those things are only meant to last a certain amount of time.

Was she a reflection of you, a projection of who you wanted to be or just an excuse to wear a blond wig?

Didn't all your hair fall out because of the dye?

I bleached it and then when we were doing the cover shoot the guy was like, "You've got a little bit of breakage at the back" – and I was like, "So are you telling me I'm going bald?"

I basically cut it into a boy's cut and then wore a wig.

You popped a new song online on New Year's Day called Immortal that features the line "everybody dies, everybody dies".

I like to imagine a lot of hungover people crying into their coffee listening to that.

Because all the songs off this album come out on double-figure dates – so 12/12, 1/1 etc (2) – I thought about what song would be suitable and I went with that one.

I love these girls 'n boys a lot pic.twitter.com/yBMLbNpLnY

I noticed you spent a lot of time with a selfie stick on New Year's Eve.

I always do the Britney walk when I'm drunk.

Not sure if you've tried it, but it's great for capturing that.

If you're a pop star, you need a good walk and the ability to look good in a hat.

I didn't want it to be the traditional spelling because I thought it looked too serious.

I like merging the natural with the synthetic.

Well I can just imagine you telling people the album's title and them going "great" and then you saying "Oh but it's spelt F R O O T".

But also the great thing was that when we came to doing the logo it looked better because the "O"s could interlink.

Do you think the public see you as being quite knowing, or cynical even?

There was definitely that in me, but that cynicism has gone now.

I feel like you hold on to that when you're not very happy and I wasn't happy.

Even when the best things happen you don't really feel them until you're happy in yourself and so you figure stuff out.

I was always looking at what wasn't happening as opposed to what was.

When I first started it was natural for me to compare myself to other pop artists and I don't do that any more really.

Members of Everything Everything and the Cure play on the album.

Will you be wearing Paisley shirts and second-hand knitwear soon?

(4) It feels like a definitive record for me.

There are some pop moments on there, but it's more of a very natural thing that came from the songwriting.

When I first started recording it I was doing it the electronic way but all of the drums sounded shit, so I got in a real drummer.

Basically, for a long time I've been trying to translate how I am on stage on to a record and before, because of working with co-writers and stuff, people just wanted to do it electronically.

But this was all written by me and me alone.

Is it true that each song has a different smell?

For the vinyl they're separated up and there's a scratch and sniff thing on all the covers.

I also saw you were kissing your fans via the medium of Twitter...

Do you know how long that fucking took me?

I was supposed to be on my Christmas break in Wales with my mum and I was like, "Mum, help me scan these kisses" and I fucked up her scanner.

All the red lipstick was going all over the scanner!

I was intrigued by this lyric from the new song Can't Pin Me Down: "Do you really want me to write a feminist anthem / I'm happy cooking dinner in the kitchen for my husband."

It's about people trying to define who you are.

It's about what people expect you to be or who they think you are, when actually they have no fucking idea.

People don't know who I am and so as an artist that's really frustrating because your whole aim is for people to understand what you're trying to express.

There's nothing wrong with being a housewife.

I'm flying to Lanzarote to shoot a video.

I need a really stark, barren backdrop so obviously I need to go to Lanzarote (laughs).

Couldn't you have just gone to Slough or something?

We were going to go to Iceland but it was just too cold, so off to the Canary Islands instead.

You can tell a lot about a pop star by their merch stand.

What can we expect from the forthcoming tour?

Well, I plan to go one up from what I've done in the past.

I really want to do scratch and sniff T-shirts.

I want to put my colour palette onto eye shadows and nail varnish.

I also want glow in the dark T-shirts that people can buy and then be part of the show.

And that way you'll sell more merch and therefore make more money!

1. Electra Heart was not only the name of her second album but also a pure-pop alter ego she created to go along with it.

2. The next song, I'm a Ruin, is out on 2/2.

4. As well as bright green Aladdin-style trousers and a pink, fake-fur shrug.

You wouldn't confuse her with one of Belle & Sebastian, let's put it that way.

On 1 March, Diamandis unveiled the album artwork for the standard version of "Electra Heart", which depicts a blonde Diamandis wearing several hair rollers.


In late 2012, Nintendo released a version of the North American black edition, including "Wii Sports" and "Wii Sports Resort" games on a single disc instead of the "New Super Mario Bros. Wii" game and the "Super Mario Galaxy" soundtrack.

(meta data) TITLE: Nintendo Wii now bundled with Wii Sports, price slashed to just $129

(meta data) PUBLISHED DATETIME: 2012-10-16T01:53:48.000Z

# Nintendo Wii now bundled with Wii Sports, price slashed to just $129

Dan GrazianoBGR NewsOctober 16, 2012Nintendo Wii now bundled with Wii Sports, price slashed to just $129

Nintendo (NTDOY) on Monday announced that it plans to cut the price of its Wii gaming console to $129.99 prior to the holiday shopping season.

The Japanese gaming company also revealed that Wii Sports and Wii Sports Resorts will now be bundled with the discounted console.

Scott Moffitt, Nintendo of America's executive vice president of sales and marketing noted that "nearly six years after it launched, people are still attracted to the pure, inclusive fun of the Wii console" and suggested that a "new… retail price and the inclusion of two great games make it an easy choice for families looking for a great value this holiday season."

Nintendo expects the discounted Wii packages to arrive in U.S. stores by October 28th.

The company's press release follows below.

Nintendo Drops Price of Wii to $129.99, Includes Both Wii Sports and Wii Sports Resort

Value Package Comes with Black Wii and Two Classic Games on One Disc

REDMOND, Wash.–(BUSINESS WIRE)–Nintendo is dropping the Wii console to a suggested retail price of $129.99 U.S. in advance of the busy holiday shopping season.

The new configuration is beginning to arrive in stores now, and will be broadly available in the U.S. by Oct. 28.

This high-value configuration includes a black Wii console and both Wii Sports and Wii Sports Resort on a single game disc, as well as a Wii Remote Plus and a Nunchuk controller – both black to match the console.

This configuration replaces the current black Wii that comes with New Super Mario Bros. Wii.

"Nearly six years after it launched, people are still attracted to the pure, inclusive fun of the Wii console," said Scott Moffitt, Nintendo of America's executive vice president of Sales & Marketing.

"A new suggested retail price and the inclusion of two great games make it an easy choice for families looking for a great value this holiday season."

Wii Sports and Wii Sports Resort represent two iconic games that helped pioneer the industry move toward motion-controlled video games.

The games include a wide variety of sports that use the controllers in unique ways.

Players can try their hand at sports like bowling, tennis, baseball, archery, table tennis and basketball, all while simulating real-life motions using the Wii Remote Plus controller.

For the first time, both games are included on a single game disc.

Video game sales continue to slide in February, Xbox still top console

Nielsen: 56% of U.S. households own a current video game console

Video game sales plummet in January, Xbox leads consoles for sixth straight month

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The Wii (RVL-101) is a cost-reduced variant released late into the Wii's lifespan that removes GameCube functionality. It lacks the GameCube controller and memory card ports found on the original model. Additionally, it does not include a stand and is intended to be positioned horizontally. The console was announced on August 17, 2011 and was released in the United States on October 23, 2011 and Europe on November 4, 2011. It was made available in Europe, bundled with a Wii Remote Plus, "Wii Party" and "Wii Sports". The console launched in white, but later a black unit bundled with "New Super Mario Bros. Wii" and the official soundtrack CD of "Super Mario Galaxy" was released on October 23, 2011 and a blue Wii unit was released to coincide with Black Friday and the release of "Mario & Sonic at the London 2012 Olympic Games" on November 18, 2011.