MIT Press and Harvard Data Science Initiative launch the Harvard Data Science Review

The following is adapted from a joint release from the MIT Press and the Harvard Data Science Initiative.

The MIT Press and the Harvard Data Science Initiative (HDSI) have announced the launch of the Harvard Data Science Review (HDSR). The open-access journal, published by MIT Press and hosted online via the multimedia platform PubPub, an initiative of the MIT Knowledge Futures group, will feature leading global thinkers in the burgeoning field of data science, making research, educational resources, and commentary accessible to academics, professionals, and the interested public. With demand for data scientists booming, HDSR will provide a centralized, authoritative, and peer-reviewed publishing community to service the growing profession.

The first issue features articles on topics ranging from authorship attribution of John Lennon-Paul McCartney songs to machine learning models for predicting drug approvals to artificial intelligence (AI). Future content will have a similar range of general interest, academic, and professional content intended to foster dialogue among researchers, educators, and practitioners about data science research, practice, literacy, and workforce development. HDSR will prioritize quality over quantity, with a primary emphasis on substance and readability, attracting readers via inspiring, informative, and intriguing papers, essays, stories, interviews, debates, guest columns, and data science news. By doing so, HDSR intends to help define and shape the profession as a scientifically rigorous and globally impactful multidisciplinary field.

Combining features of a premier research journal, a leading educational publication, and a popular magazine, HDSR will leverage digital technologies and advances to facilitate author-reader interactions globally and learning across various media.

The Harvard Data Science Review will serve as a hub for high-quality work in the growing field of data science, noted by the Harvard Business Review as the "sexiest job of the 21st century." It will feature articles that provide expert overviews of complex ideas and topics from leading thinkers with direct applications for teaching, research, business, government, and more. It will highlight content in the form of commentaries, overviews, and debates intended for a wide readership; fundamental philosophical, theoretical, and methodological research; innovations and advances in learning, teaching, and communicating data science; and short communications and letters to the editor.

The dynamic digital edition is freely available on the PubPub platform to readers around the globe.

Amy Brand, director of the MIT Press, states, “For too long the important work of data scientists has been opaque, appearing mainly in academic journals with limited reach. We are thrilled to partner with the Harvard Data Science Initiative to publish work that will have a deep impact on popular understanding of the growing field of data science. The Review will be an unparalleled resource for advancing data literacy in society.”

Francesca Dominici, the Clarence James Gamble Professor of Biostatistics, Population and Data Science, and David Parkes, the George F. Colony Professor of Computer Science, both at Harvard University, announce, “As codirectors of the Harvard Data Science Initiative, we’re thrilled for the launch of this new journal. With its rigorous and cross-disciplinary thinking, the Harvard Data ScienceReview will advance the new science of data. By sharing stories of positive transformational impact as well as raising questions, this collective endeavor will reveal the contours that will shape future research and practice.”

Xiao-li Meng, the Whipple V.N. Jones Professor of Statistics at Harvard and founding editor-in-chief of HDSR, explains, “The revolutionary ability to collect, process, and apply new analytics to extract powerful insights from data has a tremendous influence on our lives. However, hype and misinformation have emerged as unfortunate side effects of data science’s meteoric rise. The Harvard Data Science Review is designed to cut through the hype to engage readers with substantive and informed articles from the leading data science experts and practitioners, ranging from philosophers of ethics and historians of science to AI researchers and data science educators. In short, it is ‘everything data science and data science for everyone.’”

Elizabeth Langdon-Gray, inaugural executive director of HDSI, comments, “The Harvard Data Science Initiative was founded to foster collaboration in both research and teaching and to catalyze research that will benefit our society and economy. The Review plays a vital part in our effort to empower research progress and education globally and to solve some of the world’s most important challenges.”

The inaugural issue of HDSR will publish contributions from internationally renowned scholars and educators, as well as leading researchers in industry and government, such as Christine Borgman (University of California at Los Angeles), Rodney Brooks (MIT), Emmanuel Candes (Stanford University), David Donoho (Stanford University), Luciano Floridi (Oxford/The Alan Turing Institute), Alan M. Garber (Harvard), Barbara J. Grosz (Harvard), Alfred Hero (University of Michigan), Sabina Leonelli (University of Exeter), Michael I. Jordan (University of California at Berkeley), Andrew Lo (MIT), Maja Matarić (University of Southern California), Brendan McCord (U.S. Department of Defense), Nathan Sanders (WarnerMedia), Rebecca Willett (University of Chicago), and Jeannette Wing (Columbia University).

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Africa Cup of Nations 2019: Nigeria coach Rohr in no hurry to decide future

Gernot Rohr says there is 'no hurry' for him to decide on his future as Nigeria coach after the team's defeat to Algeria in the Africa Cup of Nations semi-final.

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Making high-quality education accessible to all

One of the earliest interactive course videos offered by MIT BLOSSOMS (Blended Learning Open Source Science or Math Studies) looks at the physics of donkey carts — used frequently in the streets of Pakistan. The lesson, created by Naveed Malik ‘81, looks at Newton’s Third Law of Motion, teaching how gravity can affect how two objects interact through the very visual, real-world example of a donkey pulling a cart.

At the recent LINC 2019 conference, Professor Richard Larson, principal investigator of BLOSSOMS and founding director of LINC, provided this example from 2010 of teaching STEM concepts in an engaging and locally-relevant way. Both BLOSSOMS and LINC have grown substantially over the last decade, continuing to explore and expand on the ways that technology-enabled education can improve education access — particularly for developing countries and underserved populations.

Vijay Kumar, executive director of the Abdul Latif Jameel World Education Lab (J-WEL) and associate dean for open learning at MIT, welcomed the very international LINC 2019 audience, comprising approximately 130 attendees representing 31 countries.

Kumar noted that the themes of the conference mirror the central mission of J-WEL, especially applying the innovation and research of MIT to catalyze change — with a particular focus on the developing world and emerging economies — "to address hard problems of education access and inequality.”

This year, LINC focused on “the new learning society,” trying to understand how best to address educational opportunities for diverse learners from around the world with different aspirations, motivations, and needs. Included in this group are many people who are displaced or face other financial or social obstacles to accessing a quality education. In addition to new types of learners, new tools and technologies have emerged. With the explosion of online education, digital learning has become central to the discourse on educational change.

“We are looking at questions of how technology might allow us to think more deeply about learning outcomes,” says Kumar. “How do you initiate change, how do you share resources, how do you create process to scale change, and how do you generate and maintain learning communities?”

“Leapfrogging” for bigger advances in education

Keynote speaker Rebecca Winthrop, director of the Center for Universal Education and senior fellow for global economy and development at the Brookings Institution, talked about innovations that aim to scale education to ensure that all young people across the globe develop the skills needed for a fast-changing world. Winthrop is the author of "Leapfrogging Inequality: Remaking Education to Help Young People Thrive," published by the Brookings Institution in 2018.

Many young people throughout the world — for a variety of reasons — do not have access to quality education. The Brookings Institution has identified a “100-year gap” between levels of education in wealthy and developing countries — meaning that without substantial changes in current education systems, it will take 100 years for children in developing countries to reach the education levels of children in developed countries.

Compounding this challenge is the reality that this 100-year gap refers solely to current education — to the best practices of education today. With new technologies shifting the landscape of what work might look like in the future, education needs to evolve, as well.

“We need to shift to skills that will prepare students for the future,” said Winthrop. “Students need a broad set of competencies, as well as social and emotional skills.”

Winthrop noted that research indicates that, without any significant change in practices and policies, 884 million young people worldwide will not have basic secondary-level skills by 2030.

She discussed the potential of a “leapfrogging” approach to reforming education. Like the word implies, a “leapfrogging” approach to education focuses mostly on “rapid, non-linear progress.” This approach seeks to provide access, quality, and relevance all at once, rather than in stages or steps. There is an emphasis on more student-centered teaching and learning and individualized programs that are results-oriented.

Winthrop provided a variety of examples of specific efforts that in some way reflect this approach, including a satellite education program in Brazil that divides the teaching profession into lecturing and mentoring teachers to reach more students in rural communities; a tablet-based, distance-learning program based in Sudan, Jordan, Lebanon, and Uganda; a literacy and numeracy game that started in Colombia; and tablets preloaded with localized educational content provided to small groups of students in India.

Winthrop emphasized the importance of designing for scale at the beginning, considering the cost per student and what is most important about the program.

“You need to know what is the essence of why the thing is successful, and you need to make sure that core element is preserved when moving to another context or scale,” she said.

Advancing education at MIT and beyond

A panel discussion on “Learning Everywhere” provided some examples of innovative approaches to expanding education access, including the Refugee Action Hub (ReACT) Certificate Program, which was launched during an MIT Solve competition at the Institute. The program seeks to provide pathways to education for refugees, who very rarely have access to higher education, and it includes in-person lectures, online classes, and a paid internship. Key elements of this program, and of many others discussed, are human interaction and community-building.

Another example of an innovative education program with some “leapfrogging” characteristics is the Program in Data Science, created by CoLAB, a hub of disruptive innovation organizations in Uruguay. CoLAB also supports up to 500 students over the next four years to participate in a blended learning program in data science offered through the Uruguay Technological University (UTEC). Developed through membership in J-WEL Higher Education, the Program in Data Science includes online courses from MITx and Uruguayan universities, online activities facilitated by J-WEL staff, and on-site workshops run by J-WEL and MIT International Science and Technology Initiatives (MISTI).

Although a wide variety of creative and impactful efforts were highlighted at LINC 2019, many larger education systems have not yet undergone significant changes.

“Education is super innovative — it’s just largely at the margins and not at the center of systems,” says Winthrop. “It’s a problem of how we harness that for larger systemic change.”

The LINC 2019 participants and J-WEL, as a whole, aim to address this challenge.

“It’s tremendously exciting to see all the people who have come together to share their ideas and experiences,” says Kumar. “New technologies and approaches are enabling new, shared opportunities of increasing education equality. J-WEL supports and strengthens these efforts to enable substantive educational change.”

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#BlackExcellence: Atlanta debate team takes top honors at Harvard competition second year in a row

An all-Black debate team from Atlanta, once again took top honors and sprinkled their magic at the Harvard University International Debate Competition.

—VIDEO: Megan Markle receives sweet greeting from Beyonce and Jay-Z at ‘The Lion King’ movie premiere in London—

This is the second year in a row a group of 21 Atlanta students walked away undefeated in the competition hosted by the Harvard Debate Council, WSBTV reports.

In 2018, they made history as the first all-black team to win the prestigious competition.

“This is the moment that we’ve worked so hard for,” said Don Roman Jr, 17, a senior at North Atlanta High School told WSB. “Our accomplishment is far bigger than us. We are showing the world what black youths are capable of achieving when given equal access, exposure, and opportunities. This win is for our ancestors, our city, and most of all our culture.”

Harvard Debate Council, which runs the annual summer program, divided nearly 400 participants, including high school students from Asia, Europe and Russia, into teams for the competition.

Brandon P. Fleming, an assistant debate coach at Harvard, cultivated the tough-to-beat Atlanta team. He also is the founder of the Harvard Diversity Project.

—VIDEO: Megan Markle receives sweet greeting from Beyonce and Jay-Z at ‘The Lion King’ movie premiere in London—

“It sends a message to the world to what African American youth are capable of, if they are given access and opportunities,” Fleming told WSB. “Most of our students have never been exposed to the power of academic debate. Knowing that they will compete against hundreds of scholars who have years of debate experience, combined with the benefit of private and prep schools to their advantage, we seek to level the playing field by introducing our students to higher level academic disciplines that are typically unavailable in traditional school settings.”

Fleming fashioned his team with the name ‘The Great Debaters’, after the notable Wiley College’s debate squads in the 1920s and 1930s that was also the subject of a 2007 movie starring Denzel Washingon.

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President Obama congratulates woman he gave clemency for making dean’s list in college

A woman who was sent to prison to serve three life sentences plus 20 years for cocaine trafficking got a new lease on life when former President Barack Obama commuted her sentence back in 2016.

Since her release, Danielle Metz has been working on becoming the change and enrolled in a university and earned a 3.75 GPA.

And our Forever POTUS couldn’t wait to congratulate her on her achievement.

—Sculpture of President Obama unveiled in Rapid City, South Dakota—

Obama wrote Metz a handwritten note congratulating her on her achievements making the dean’s list at Southern University in New Orleans, The NY Daily News reports.

Metz wanted to tell the President about her triumphs post-prison. In 1993, she was handed down the life sentence for cocaine trafficking. She earned her GED in prison and from there she wrote letters to lawmakers, begging for her freedom.

Her letter-writing campaign paid off and in 2016, she was released. The next year she enrolled in college and in her first year she earned an honorable GPA she told The Hechinger Report.

Obama got wind of Metz hard work and took the time to respond with a congratulatory letter.

“I am so proud of you, and am confident that your example will have a positive impact for others who are looking for a second chance,” Obama wrote. “Tell your children I say hello, and know that I’m rooting for all of you.”

Exciting coda to my @USATODAY / @hechingerreport story about a New Orleans woman going to college after spending half her life in prison: @BarackObama sent her a letter this week! pic.twitter.com/1brbEgaymW

— Casey Parks (@caseyparks) July 11, 2019

Nice job, Mr. President.

Obama sculpture unveiled

Obama is so beloved that he’s getting honored with a sculpture in Rapid City, South Dakota, not a big balloon of a baby in diapers like Trump did.

According to CNN, former President Barack Obama can now be seen as part of the City of Presidents project, a downtown district collection of presidential sculptures that celebrate numerous past presidents. Obama’s sculpture, created by artist James Van Nuys, was unveiled on Saturday for the public.

—VIDEO: Megan Markle receives sweet greeting from Beyonce and Jay-Z at ‘The Lion King’ movie premiere in London—

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Caf boss Ahmad paid expenses for same days but different countries

Confederation of African Football president Ahmad received at least two sets of expenses, claiming to be in different countries, for the same nine-day period during the 2018 World Cup.

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Philip Freelon, professor of the practice and champion of diversity in architecture, dies at 66

Philip G. Freelon MArch ’77, professor of the practice in the MIT Department of Architecture, lead architect for the Smithsonian’s National Museum of African American History and Culture, and a dedicated force for inclusivity within the field of architecture, died on July 9 in Durham, North Carolina, of the neuro-degenerative disease amyotrphic lateral sclerosis (ALS), with which he had been diagnosed in 2016. He was 66.

For nine years beginning in 2007, Freelon taught 4.222 (Professional Practice), a required subject in the master’s in architecture program that uses current examples to illustrate the legal, ethical, and management concepts underlying the practice of architecture.

“Phil was a remarkable architect, a motivating teacher, a spirited public intellectual and above all, an exceptional human being whose modesty and respect of others and their ideas put the best face on the architect and on the profession,” says Hashim Sarkis, dean of MIT’s School of Architecture and Planning (SA+P). 

A native of Philadelphia, Freelon attended Hampton University in Virginia before transferring to North Carolina State University, from which he graduated in 1975 with a bachelor of environmental design degree in architecture. He earned his master’s degree in architecture from MIT and at age 25 was the youngest person to pass the Architecture Registration Exam in North Carolina.

The Freelon Group, which he founded in 1990, became one of the largest African American-owned architectural firms in the country.

“Phil Freelon was a creative and productive alumnus of the MIT School of Architecture and Planning,” says Adèle Naudé Santos, SA+P dean when Freelon joined the faculty. “His buildings are beautifully crafted and spatially inventive, and we were proud to have him on our faculty. We are greatly saddened by his passing.”

Freelon headed multifaceted design teams for museum projects and cultural institutions such as the Museum of the African Diaspora in San Francisco, the Reginald F. Lewis Museum of Maryland African American History and Culture in Baltimore, the National Center for Civil and Human Rights in Atlanta, the Harvey B. Gantt Center for African-American Arts and Culture in Charlotte, Emancipation Park in Houston, and the Anacostia and Tenleytown branches of the District of Columbia Public Library System.

The practice joined with three other design firms as Freelon Adjaye Bond/SmithGroup to create the Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and Culture. As lead architect and architect of record for the project, on which David Adjaye was lead designer, Freelon directed the programming and planning effort that set the stage for the museum’s design. 

In 2014, The Freelon Group joined global design firm Perkins and Will. Recent and current projects led by Freelon include North Carolina Freedom Park in Raleigh, the Durham County Human Services Complex, the Durham Transportation Center, and the Motown Museum Expansion in Detroit. He was appointed to the board of directors and the executive committee of Perkins and Will while serving dual roles as managing director and design director of the firm’s North Carolina practice.

In addition to his role at MIT, he was an adjunct faculty member at North Carolina State University’s College of Design and lectured at Harvard University (where he was a Loeb Fellow), the University of Maryland, Syracuse University, Auburn University, the University of Utah, the University of California at Berkeley, Kent State University, and the New Jersey Institute of Technology, among others. A Peer Professional for the GSA’s Design Excellence Program, he also served on numerous design award juries including the National AIA Institute Honor Awards jury and the National Endowment for the Arts Design Stewardship Panel. 

“Phil was one of the hardest working people I ever knew,” said Lawrence Sass, associate professor in the Department of Architecture at MIT and director of the computation group. “I could not believe that someone so humble could have done so much. He was a dedicated professor in addition to being a trusted design professional, and a leader who lived in the spirit of a design giant. He taught from real-world experience. He was emotionally and professionally accessible. I will forever miss and remember his larger-than-life presence walking down the Infinite Corridor.”

Freelon was a Fellow of the American Institute of Architects, and the recipient of the AIA North Carolina’s Gold Medal, its highest individual honor. A LEED Accredited Professional, he was the 2009 recipient of the AIA Thomas Jefferson Award for Public Architecture, and in 2011 was appointed by President Obama to the U.S. Commission of Fine Arts. The Freelon Group received 26 AIA design awards (regional, state, and local) and received AIA North Carolina’s Outstanding Firm Award (2001). Freelon’s furniture design received first prize in the PPG Furniture Design Competition, and he did design contract work with Herman Miller.

His work has appeared in national professional publications including Architecture, Progressive Architecture, Architectural Record, and Contract magazine (Designer of the Year, 2008), and his and the firm’s work has been featured in Metropolis and Metropolitan Home magazines and the The New York Times. 

Freelon is survived by his wife of 40 years, Nnenna Freelon; his children Deen, Maya, and Pierce; three siblings; and six grandchildren. A celebration of his life will be held on Sept. 28 at the Durham County Human Services Complex in Durham. In lieu of flowers, donations can be made to NorthStar Church of the Arts, a nonprofit art and culture center founded by Nnenna and Phil Freelon.

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Professor Emeritus Fernando Corbató, MIT computing pioneer, dies at 93

Fernando “Corby” Corbató, an MIT professor emeritus whose work in the 1960s on time-sharing systems broke important ground in democratizing the use of computers, died on Friday, July 12, at his home in Newburyport, Massachusetts. He was 93.

Decades before the existence of concepts like cybersecurity and the cloud, Corbató led the development of one of the world’s first operating systems. His “Compatible Time-Sharing System” (CTSS) allowed multiple people to use a computer at the same time, greatly increasing the speed at which programmers could work. It’s also widely credited as the first computer system to use passwords. 

After CTSS Corbató led a time-sharing effort called Multics, which directly inspired operating systems like Linux and laid the foundation for many aspects of modern computing. Multics doubled as a fertile training ground for an emerging generation of programmers that included C programming language creator Dennis Ritchie, Unix developer Ken Thompson, and spreadsheet inventors Dan Bricklin and Bob Frankston.

Before time-sharing, using a computer was tedious and required detailed knowledge. Users would create programs on cards and submit them in batches to an operator, who would enter them to be run one at a time over a series of hours. Minor errors would require repeating this sequence, often more than once.

But with CTSS, which was first demonstrated in 1961, answers came back in mere seconds, forever changing the model of program development. Decades before the PC revolution, Corbató and his colleagues also opened up communication between users with early versions of email, instant messaging, and word processing. 

“Corby was one of the most important researchers for making computing available to many people for many purposes,” says long-time colleague Tom Van Vleck. “He saw that these concepts don’t just make things more efficient; they fundamentally change the way people use information.”

Besides making computing more efficient, CTSS also inadvertently helped establish the very concept of digital privacy itself. With different users wanting to keep their own files private, CTSS introduced the idea of having people create individual accounts with personal passwords. Corbató’s vision of making high-performance computers available to more people also foreshadowed trends in cloud computing, in which tech giants like Amazon and Microsoft rent out shared servers to companies around the world. 

“Other people had proposed the idea of time-sharing before,” says Jerry Saltzer, who worked on CTSS with Corbató after starting out as his teaching assistant. “But what he brought to the table was the vision and the persistence to get it done.”

CTSS was also the spark that convinced MIT to launch “Project MAC,” the precursor to the Laboratory for Computer Science (LCS). LCS later merged with the Artificial Intelligence Lab to become MIT’s largest research lab, the Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (CSAIL), which is now home to more than 600 researchers. 

“It’s no overstatement to say that Corby’s work on time-sharing fundamentally transformed computers as we know them today,” says CSAIL Director Daniela Rus. “From PCs to smartphones, the digital revolution can directly trace its roots back to the work that he led at MIT nearly 60 years ago.” 

In 1990 Corbató was honored for his work with the Association of Computing Machinery’s Turing Award, often described as “the Nobel Prize for computing.”

From sonar to CTSS

Corbató was born on July 1, 1926 in Oakland, California. At 17 he enlisted as a technician in the U.S. Navy, where he first got the engineering bug working on a range of radar and sonar systems. After World War II he earned his bachelor's degree at Caltech before heading to MIT to complete a PhD in physics. 

As a PhD student, Corbató met Professor Philip Morse, who recruited him to work with his team on Project Whirlwind, the first computer capable of real-time computation. After graduating, Corbató joined MIT's Computation Center as a research assistant, soon moving up to become deputy director of the entire center. 

It was there that he started thinking about ways to make computing more efficient. For all its innovation, Whirlwind was still a rather clunky machine. Researchers often had trouble getting much work done on it, since they had to take turns using it for half-hour chunks of time. (Corbató said that it had a habit of crashing every 20 minutes or so.) 

Since computer input and output devices were much slower than the computer itself, in the late 1950s a scheme called multiprogramming was developed to allow a second program to run whenever the first program was waiting for some device to finish. Time-sharing built on this idea, allowing other programs to run while the first program was waiting for a human user to type a request, thus allowing the user to interact directly with the first program.

Saltzer says that Corbató pioneered a programming approach that would be described today as agile design. 

“It’s a buzzword now, but back then it was just this iterative approach to coding that Corby encouraged and that seemed to work especially well,” he says.  

In 1962 Corbató published a paper about CTSS that quickly became the talk of the slowly-growing computer science community. The following year MIT invited several hundred programmers to campus to try out the system, spurring a flurry of further research on time-sharing.

Foreshadowing future technological innovation, Corbató was amazed — and amused — by how quickly people got habituated to CTSS’ efficiency.

“Once a user gets accustomed to [immediate] computer response, delays of even a fraction of a minute are exasperatingly long,” he presciently wrote in his 1962 paper. “First indications are that programmers would readily use such a system if it were generally available.”

Multics, meanwhile, expanded on CTSS’ more ad hoc design with a hierarchical file system, better interfaces to email and instant messaging, and more precise privacy controls. Peter Neumann, who worked at Bell Labs when they were collaborating with MIT on Multics, says that its design prevented the possibility of many vulnerabilities that impact modern systems, like “buffer overflow” (which happens when a program tries to write data outside the computer’s short-term memory). 

“Multics was so far ahead of the rest of the industry,” says Neumann. “It was intensely software-engineered, years before software engineering was even viewed as a discipline.” 

In spearheading these time-sharing efforts, Corbató served as a soft-spoken but driven commander in chief — a logical thinker who led by example and had a distinctly systems-oriented view of the world.

“One thing I liked about working for Corby was that I knew he could do my job if he wanted to,” says Van Vleck. “His understanding of all the gory details of our work inspired intense devotion to Multics, all while still being a true gentleman to everyone on the team.” 

Another legacy of the professor’s is “Corbató’s Law,” which states that the number of lines of code someone can write in a day is the same regardless of the language used. This maxim is often cited by programmers when arguing in favor of using higher-level languages.

Corbató was an active member of the MIT community, serving as associate department head for computer science and engineering from 1974 to 1978 and 1983 to 1993. He was a member of the National Academy of Engineering, and a fellow of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers and the American Association for the Advancement of Science. 

Corbató is survived by his wife, Emily Corbató, from Brooklyn, New York; his stepsons, David and Jason Gish; his brother, Charles; and his daughters, Carolyn and Nancy, from his marriage to his late wife Isabel; and five grandchildren. 

In lieu of flowers, gifts may be made to MIT’s Fernando Corbató Fellowship Fund via Bonny Kellermann in the Memorial Gifts Office. 

CSAIL will host an event to honor and celebrate Corbató in the coming months. 

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Star Wars News: 'Rise of Skywalker' Reshoots Are Happening, Apparently

Don't worry, though. This is unlikely to be some kind of 'Rogue One' situation.

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Rihanna criticized for ‘cultural appropriation’ for wearing Asian-inspired garb for Harper’s Bizarre cover

Rihanna is a style maven in her own right but some folks are calling out her latest cover look as completely wrong.

A photoshoot with Harper’s Bazaar China has people accusing the singer and beauty boss of cultural appropriation for wearing traditional Asian-inspired garb for a unique photoshoot, The NY Daily News reports.

—VIDEO: Megan Markle receives sweet greeting from Beyonce and Jay-Z at ‘The Lion King’ movie premiere in London—

“I am asian and I find it offensive,” one Instagram user wrote on the Harper’s Bazaar China’s page.

“If you wanted to create an Asian look why didn’t you invite asian artists?” the commenter asked.

Another person wrote: “THIS IS A TOTAL SMACK IN THE FACE TO THE ASIAN CULTURE.”

Earlier this year Rihanna made history as first woman of color to helm own fashion line with LVMH, becoming the first woman to create an original brand at the famed fashion house. Others defended Rih Rih’s fashion sense saying she was giving props to Asian cultural with “cultural appreciation.”

“They’re using Rihanna’s celebrity to pay homage to Chinese culture people,” one person said. “There’s no shortage of Chinese women modeling on this Instagram site. Calm down people!”

Harper’s Bazaar China wrote on Instagram that the cover photoshoot was to show “when western style icon meets eastern aesthetic.”

While Rihanna has yet to comment to the criticism, she surely is enjoying the success 2019 has brought for her and her fans.

This year, the singer broke new ground with Fenty after securing a deal with LVMH Moët Hennessy Louis Vuitton.

—Oprah Winfrey visits Maui Humane Society following wildfire—

“Everybody knows Rihanna as a wonderful singer, but through our partnership at Fenty Beauty, I discovered a true entrepreneur, a real C.E.O. and a terrific leader,” Bernard Arnault, the chairman of LVMH, previously said in the statement.

In recent months, Rih Rih has has also launched collaborations with Puma, snatching fans coins for her Savage x Fenty lingerie collections and Fenty Beauty.

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VIDEO: Megan Markle receives sweet greeting from Beyonce and Jay-Z at ‘The Lion King’ movie premiere in London

Oprah Winfrey visits Maui Humane Society following wildfire

Oprah Winfrey surprised the Maui Humane Society with a visit to thank the organization for evacuating animals during a wildfire, a report said.

Winfrey is a part-time Maui resident who visited the society briefly Saturday, thanking a volunteer and taking a photo outside with the organization’s sign, The Maui News reported Saturday.

Winfrey is a society supporter, said Nancy Willis, the society’s director of development and community outreach.

“We are appreciative and grateful that she recognized the hard work of the community,” Willis said.

More than 200 animals were evacuated Thursday after a brush fire started in Maui’s southern area, coming close to the Human Society’s building in Puunene before moving farther south, officials said.

Winfrey posted the photo of herself at the shelter on social media and included a hashtag for the society, as well as the Maui police and fire departments.

“Everyone’s safe including all the animals,” Winfrey wrote. “Thank you for your service.”
Winfrey also gave permission Thursday for emergency officials to use a private road on her property if it was needed to evacuate residents and visitors.

Maui resident Jack Moussally sent a message on Twitter to Winfrey asking her to “consider opening the ranch road so we can get upcountry.”

“Hi there Jack. Access to the road was given to county officials immediately,” Winfrey responded. “This was many hours ago. Hoping for the safety of all.”

Winfrey’s road ultimately was not used, Maui County spokesman Chris Sugidono said.

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Texas sheriff apologizes to NFL player, defends deputy who called him ‘big Black male’ during traffic stop at his home

A Texas sheriff said Friday he has apologized to New England Patriots player Elandon Roberts for the actions of a deputy who referred to the linebacker’s race and size during a March traffic stop but also defended the deputy’s comment and the stop.

Fort Bend County Sheriff Troy Nehls said during a news conference that he spoke with Roberts and his attorney and said the deputy should not have taken so long with the March 10 traffic stop.

Roberts was stopped as he pulled into the driveway of his Houston-area home and Nehls also said Deputy Adam Watkins was wrong to order Roberts’ wife back inside the home when she saw flashing lights and stepped outside.

“The way he interacted with his wife, I didn’t appreciate the tone,” Nehls said of his deputy.
Watkins, who is white, ultimately was issued a verbal reprimand for how he conducted the stop, according to sheriff’s Capt. Steve Holtz.

But the stop, which was captured on dash-cam video , was warranted because Roberts was traveling 59 mph in a 35 mph zone as he traveled home, Nehls said. Holtz explained the ticket later was changed to a warning at the deputy’s request.

Watkins, in speaking to a colleague, referred to Roberts as a “big, black male” but Nehls defended the reference to race, saying the deputy was simply offering a description of the driver. The sheriff didn’t comment on why it was necessary for the deputy to invoke Roberts’ race.

Roberts, 25, in a statement to USA Today was critical of his treatment, saying, “Unfortunately, these types of things are happening all too often to African Americans.”
Watkins also told a colleague that Roberts “wouldn’t comply” when told to get back into his car after getting out once he pulled into his driveway. “I had to yell at him pretty hard,” Watkins is heard saying on the video.

Holtz said Watkins, a rookie only on the job a few months when the stop occurred, became nervous when he saw Roberts initially get out of his car. He said the mistakes Watkins committed were understandable in light of his inexperience.

Nehls criticized USA Today for publishing an edited version of the stop that he believes was misleading. The sheriff also criticized those who turn the encounter “into a racial issue.”
“I think there have been traffic stops and interactions between white and black that have caused some of the most horrible, civil unrest in this country,” Nehls said, adding that, “We haven’t experienced that in Fort Bend County.”

The fast-growing county is just southwest of Houston. Roberts, who lives in Richmond, starred at the University of Houston before being drafted by the Patriots in the sixth round of the 2016 NFL draft.

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