Barbican Hall, London John Butt’s Dunedin Consort premiered Davies’s new Passion: a startlingly sensual meditation with a sense of ritual – and an electric guitar hidden amid the baroque instrumentation Most period-instrument bands spend Lent playing as many Bach Passions as they can schedule, but here were the Dunedin Consort and conductor John Butt adding to their already impressive list of prem...
Barbican Hall, London John Butt’s Dunedin Consort premiered Davies’s new Passion: a startlingly sensual meditation with a sense of ritual – and an electric guitar hidden amid the baroque instrumentation Most period-instrument bands spend Lent playing as many Bach Passions as they can schedule, but here were the Dunedin Consort and conductor John Butt adding to their already impressive list of premieres with a brand new Passion. A co-commission with the Edinburgh international festival, where it will be heard in August, it is the fruit of the composer Tansy Davies’s long fascination with the elusive figure of Mary Magdalene. Davies’s text draws on several sources including the second- or third-century, non-canonical Gospel of Mary, and weaves in evocative poetry by Ruth Fainlight. It unfolds steadily in a 90-minute span divided into seven episodes, related by eight singers – four women, four men. Mary Magdalene herself, radiantly sung here by Anna Dennis, is a visionary, with long passages of almost mystical words, the melody leaping from note to note; the other three women sing in chords, giving voice to an Oracle. It’s more of a meditation than a Passion-setting in the traditional sense, but there’s no new-age looseness: Davies’s score is tautly written. And the story gets told, if not in quite the usual way. Jesus’s first words – addressed here by the otherwise velvet-voiced baritone Marcus Farnsworth to Tim Lilburn’s countertenor demon – are an angry “Shut up!”, and some of Fainlight’s poetry is startlingly sensual. Continue reading...
In this photo illustration a 13-year-old teenage boy looks at an iPhone screen displaying various social media apps on January 12, 2026 in Bath, England. Matt Cardy | Getty Images News | Getty Images The U.K. government is trialing a social media ban for hundreds of teens, after the country's lawmakers rejected a blanket ban on under-16s using the platforms. The U.K.'s Department for Science, Inno...
In this photo illustration a 13-year-old teenage boy looks at an iPhone screen displaying various social media apps on January 12, 2026 in Bath, England. Matt Cardy | Getty Images News | Getty Images The U.K. government is trialing a social media ban for hundreds of teens, after the country's lawmakers rejected a blanket ban on under-16s using the platforms. The U.K.'s Department for Science, Innovation & Technology said Wednesday that it will run a six-week pilot with various bans ranging from curfews to time caps on certain apps on 300 teenagers across the country. The pilot is part of its broader digital wellbeing consultation launched this year, which has already received 30,000 responses from parents and children on the effect of social media on children's wellbeing, and closes on 26 May. It includes four types of interventions, with one set of parents instructed to use parental controls to remove or disable select apps; a second group to impose a one-hour cap per day for teens on the most popular apps, including Instagram, TikTok, and Snapchat; a third set will impose a curfew between 9 p.m. to 7 a.m., and a final group will continue will not restrict social media access at all. This comes after U.K. lawmakers voted against a proposal to include a social media ban for under-16s in an existing piece of legislation, the Children's Wellbeing and Schools Bill, earlier this month. watch now VIDEO 1:57 01:57 Tracking Europe's approach to social media bans for teenagers Europe Early Edition Shortly after, online safety organizations in the U.K., Ofcom and the Information Commissioner's Office, urged social media firms to ensure the protection of children online through measures, such as better use of age verification technologies and preventing strangers from contacting teens. Australia became the first country to ban social media for under-16-year-olds in December, and other countries began mulling something similar. Read more Australia banned social media for under...
melissabrock1/iStock via Getty Images Commentators have been discussing the “K-Shaped Economy” for a few years, but as time has gone on, it's only gotten worse. What I naively thought would be a trend that we left behind post-2023 after the worst of the inflation woes ended has become a long-term trend. The upper end is doing okay, whereas the middle class and lower end are weakening. We've notice...
melissabrock1/iStock via Getty Images Commentators have been discussing the “K-Shaped Economy” for a few years, but as time has gone on, it's only gotten worse. What I naively thought would be a trend that we left behind post-2023 after the worst of the inflation woes ended has become a long-term trend. The upper end is doing okay, whereas the middle class and lower end are weakening. We've noticed it in wage growth primarily, but it's also in asset growth, as well as other factors like default rates. Apollo I've been covering this trend on Seeking Alpha, most recently in “ The Consumer is Tapping Out, ” where I discussed flatlining retail sales. Here's an excerpt making a point about the recent acceleration of the lower leg of the K. ....Placer Labs, which tracks foot traffic into retail stores...noted that discount and dollar stores like Dollar General ( DG ) and Dollar Tree ( DLTR ), among others, had [risen above superstore traffic]. It would seem that consumer spending was flat because they were trading down on the price chain to afford similar quantities. Placer Labs They noted similar trends among off-price retailers—above the dollar stores in the price-to-quantity ratio but below superstores—and thrift stores as well, with their traffic also spiking during the peak of this holiday shopping season compared to last year. Placer Labs The consumer becoming more money-conscious is not a good sign of their robustness. I was quick to dismiss the retail sales data being flat as noisy, especially considering that 2024 was an unusual year in wage growth, so comparisons are tough. But take in the data that off-price, thrift, and dollar stores are taking market share of consumers while the YoY rate is flat, and it looks like contraction to me. The question was put to me recently, asking what stocks I'd consider buying to benefit from this trend. Now that I think we're entering a zone of market support that will mark a near-term bottom , it's worth really considering. Lu...
Over the past few years, a new category of mobile apps has quietly exploded into a multi-billion dollar business. They’re called “micro dramas” — short-form, mobile-first scripted shows designed to be watched vertically on your phone. Think soap opera meets TikTok, complete with secret billionaire romances, disapproving werewolf mothers-in-law, and cliffhangers engineered to keep users tapping. Th...
Over the past few years, a new category of mobile apps has quietly exploded into a multi-billion dollar business. They’re called “micro dramas” — short-form, mobile-first scripted shows designed to be watched vertically on your phone. Think soap opera meets TikTok, complete with secret billionaire romances, disapproving werewolf mothers-in-law, and cliffhangers engineered to keep users tapping. The leading […]
LOS ANGELES, March 25, 2026--ReFrame, the initiative launched in 2017 by Sundance Institute and WIF to advance gender equity in the screen industries, and IMDbPro, the essential resource for entertainment industry professionals, today announced that 26 of the IMDbPro 100 most popular films of 2025 will be awarded the ReFrame Stamp for gender-balanced production. The findings of the 2025 ReFrame Re...
LOS ANGELES, March 25, 2026--ReFrame, the initiative launched in 2017 by Sundance Institute and WIF to advance gender equity in the screen industries, and IMDbPro, the essential resource for entertainment industry professionals, today announced that 26 of the IMDbPro 100 most popular films of 2025 will be awarded the ReFrame Stamp for gender-balanced production. The findings of the 2025 ReFrame Report, which examines hiring across key roles on all 100 films based on IMDbPro data, can be viewed H
Microsoft (NASDAQ: MSFT) looks caught between fear and opportunity following a sharp pullback. Investors are worried the company's AI spending could pressure profits, but if Azure, Copilot, and cloud growth keep delivering, this weakness may look like a major mispricing in hindsight. Stock prices used were the market prices of March 18, 2026. The video was published on March 24, 2026. Continue rea...
Microsoft (NASDAQ: MSFT) looks caught between fear and opportunity following a sharp pullback. Investors are worried the company's AI spending could pressure profits, but if Azure, Copilot, and cloud growth keep delivering, this weakness may look like a major mispricing in hindsight. Stock prices used were the market prices of March 18, 2026. The video was published on March 24, 2026. Continue reading
Over the past few years, a new category of mobile apps has quietly exploded into a multi-billion dollar business. They’re called “micro dramas” — short-form, mobile-first scripted shows designed to be watched vertically on your phone. Think soap opera meets TikTok, complete with secret billionaire romances, disapproving werewolf mothers-in-law, and cliffhangers engineered to keep users tapping. Th...
Over the past few years, a new category of mobile apps has quietly exploded into a multi-billion dollar business. They’re called “micro dramas” — short-form, mobile-first scripted shows designed to be watched vertically on your phone. Think soap opera meets TikTok, complete with secret billionaire romances, disapproving werewolf mothers-in-law, and cliffhangers engineered to keep users tapping. The leading […]