Category: Новини

Washington, DC has turned the National Building Museum into a wonderland of children’s literature. Using children’s books, it’s an immersive journey into architecture, engineering and design. Maxim Adams has the story. Camera and edit: Andrey Degtyarev, Andrey Degtyarev, Anna Rice
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MELBOURNE, Australia — Jannik Sinner has upset Novak Djokovic to reach the Australian Open men’s final, ending the 10-time champion’s career unbeaten streak in semifinals at Melbourne Park.

The 22-year-old Italian broke Djokovic’s serve twice in each of the first two sets but missed a match point in the third set of a 6-1, 6-2, 6-7 (6), 6-3 victory Friday that earned him a place in a Grand Slam final for the first time.

On his second match point, 55 minutes later, he made no mistake and completed his third victory in four matches against Djokovic since losing to the world No. 1 in last year’s Wimbledon semifinals.

“It’s always nice to have this kind of player who you can learn from,” Sinner said in his on-court TV interview. “I lost last year in the semifinals in Wimbledon, and I learned a lot from that. The confidence from the end of last year has for sure kept the belief that I can play the best players in the world.”

The youngest player to reach the men’s final in Australia since Djokovic’s first title in 2008, Sinner will play either third-seeded Daniil Medvedev or No. 6 Alexander Zverev for the championship on Sunday.

Djokovic’s bid for a record-extending 11th Australian and 25th major title overall will have to wait.

He hadn’t lost a match at Melbourne Park since 2018 and was on a 33-match winning streak at the season’s first major. Every previous time he’d won a quarterfinal in Australia, Djokovic had gone on to win the hardcourt title.

The loss to Djokovic at Wimbledon has become a turning point in their rivalry. After losing the first three meetings, Sinner won two of the next three — all in November — in the group stage of the ATP Finals in Turin and in the Davis Cup semifinals.

Sinner was the only player in the final four who didn’t drop a set in the tournament, and he spent almost four fewer hours on court through five rounds than Djokovic, who was taken to four sets three times.

Still, the odds were stacked against fourth-seeded Sinner.

But he played calm, nearly flawless tennis in the first two sets and piled pressure on Djokovic’s serve in a relatively cool 21 degrees Celsius and a light breeze.

He was holding his serve with relative ease against a player contesting a 48th Grand Slam semifinal.

Djokovic rallied, as he always does, to make Sinner win it. But he had few chances and didn’t get a look at a break point in the match — the first time he’s experienced that in a completed Grand Slam match.

The 36-year-old Serbian star missed his first chance to be just the third person in history to win 11 titles at any Grand Slam event — Rafael Nadal has 14 French Open titles and Margaret Court won 11 Australian Open women’s titles. 
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LONDON — An American scientist has sparked a trans-Atlantic tempest in a teapot by offering Britain advice on its favorite hot beverage.

Bryn Mawr College chemistry professor Michelle Francl says one of the keys to a perfect cup of tea is a pinch of salt. The tip is included in Francl’s book Steeped: The Chemistry of Tea, published Wednesday by the Royal Society of Chemistry.

Not since the Boston Tea Party has mixing tea with salt water roiled the Anglo-American relationship so much.

The salt suggestion drew howls of outrage from tea lovers in Britain, where popular stereotype sees Americans as coffee-swilling boors who make tea, if at all, in the microwave.

“Don’t even say the word ‘salt’ to us,” the etiquette guide Debrett’s wrote on X, formerly known as Twitter.

The U.S. Embassy in London intervened in the brewing storm with a social media post reassuring “the good people of the U.K. that the unthinkable notion of adding salt to Britain’s national drink is not official United States policy.”

“Let us unite in our steeped solidarity and show the world that when it comes to tea, we stand as one,” said the tongue-in-cheek post. “The U.S. Embassy will continue to make tea in the proper way — by microwaving it.”

The embassy later clarified that its statement was “a lighthearted play on our shared cultural connections” rather than an official press release.

Steeped, in contrast, is no joke. The product of three years’ research and experimentation, the book explores the more than 100 chemical compounds found in tea and “puts the chemistry to use with advice on how to brew a better cup,” its publisher says.

Francl said adding a small amount of salt — not enough to taste — makes tea seem less bitter because “the sodium ions in salt block the bitter receptors in our mouths.”

She also advocates making tea in a pre-warmed pot, agitating the bag briefly but vigorously and serving it in a short, stout mug to preserve the heat. And she says milk should be added to the cup after the tea, not before — another issue that often divides tea lovers.

Francl has been surprised by the level of reaction to her book in Britain.

“I kind of understood that there would hopefully be a lot of interest,” she told The Associated Press. “I didn’t know we’d wade into a diplomatic conversation with the U.S. Embassy.”

It has made her ponder the ocean-wide coffee-tea divide that separates the U.S. and Britain.

“I wonder if we’re just a more caffeinated society — coffee is higher in caffeine,” she said. “Or maybe we’re just trying to rebel against our parent country.”
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San Francisco — Netflix added 13 million subscribers in the final three months of last year, the company said on Tuesday, despite price hikes at the leading streaming service.

Netflix finished 2023 with slightly more than 260 million subscribers worldwide, with a profit of $938 million in the final quarter versus just $55 million in the same period a year earlier.

“We believe there is plenty of room for growth ahead as streaming expands,” the U.S. company said in an earnings letter.

Netflix shares were up more than 8% to $532.75 in after-market trades that followed the release of the earnings figures.

“Netflix sticks out as the clear front-runner in the streaming wars,” said Insider Intelligence principal analyst Ross Benes.

The streaming pioneer said that despite last year’s strikes by Hollywood actors and writers, the company has a “big, bold” slate of content for release this year.

The company touted coming content including a sequel to the hit Squid Game series out of South Korea and a brand new “3 Body Problem” show based on a bestselling novel by the same name.

“Choice and control are the price of entry in modern entertainment, and that is streaming,” Netflix said in the letter. “It’s what consumers want, and we believe it’s the best way for our industry to stay relevant and growing.”

The earnings news came the same day that Netflix sealed a long-term broadcast deal with the WWE professional wrestling juggernaut, as it pushes further into sporting events.

Beginning in the United States in 2025, Netflix will become the exclusive new home of “Raw,” the WWE’s flagship program that has been broadcasting on television since 1993.

The agreement will also see WWE shows and live events streamed across the globe as their rights become available.

With an initial 10-year term for $5 billion, the deal has an option for Netflix to extend the deal for an additional 10 years or opt out after the first five years.

“We expect our industry to remain highly competitive,” Netflix said, citing heavy investment by rivals including Amazon, Apple and YouTube. “It’s why continuing to improve our entertainment offering is so important.”

Netflix late last year increased the price of its basic plan in the United States to $11.99 monthly and its premium plan to $22.99, with similar price increases seen in Britain and France.

After a period of rocky earnings, earlier in 2022, the Silicon Valley giant expanded its crackdown on users sharing passwords with people beyond their immediate family.

In a separate bid for revenue, Netflix launched an ad-subsidized offering around the same time as the crackdown.

The ad-supported tier is priced at $7 monthly and is growing fast but has yet to become a main driver of overall revenue, according to Netflix.

As the ad-tiers gain momentum, the company said on Tuesday that it would retire the lowest cost ad-free plan, starting with Canada and the UK in the second quarter of this year.

The company said earlier this month it has 23 million subscribers using the ad-supported tier, which accounts for 40% of new sign-ups.

Netflix Co-Chief Executive Greg Peters said during an earnings call that the company is continuing to expand its lineup of more than 80 mobile games that subscribers can play, having recently added the blockbuster “Grand Theft Auto.”

“We’re stoked by the performance of GTA,” said Peters, noting that the Netflix mobile game exceeded even the company’s high hopes for it.
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