Actor Neil Patrick Harris to host 2015 Oscars

LOS ANGELES: Award-winning US stage and screen actor Neil Patrick Harris will host the next Oscars show, organizers announced.

The star, who has hosted both Broadway's Tony and TV's Emmy awards shows in the past, will front the 87th Academy Awards on February 22, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences said on Wednesday. 

The high-profile hosting job is a prime gig in Hollywood, at the climax of its annual awards season. Harris will follow Ellen DeGeneres last year and a who's who of showbiz over the decades. 

"It is truly an honor and a thrill to be asked to host this year's Academy Awards," said the star of 2005's "How I Met Your Mother," in an Academy statement. 

"I grew up watching the Oscars and was always in such awe of some of the greats who hosted the show," added Harris, whose latest film "Gone Girl" came out this month in the United States. 

He added: "To be asked to follow in the footsteps of Johnny Carson, Billy Crystal, Ellen DeGeneres and everyone else who had the great fortune of hosting is a bucket list dream come true." 

Producers Craig Zadan and Neil Meron said: "We are thrilled to have Neil host the Oscars. We have known him his entire adult life, and we have watched him explode as a great performer in feature films, television and stage. 

"To work with him on the Oscars is the perfect storm, all of his resources and talent coming together on a global stage," added the pair, returning for their third Oscars show in a row. 

Industry journal Variety noted that, with the Oscars job Harris will have done three of the four so-called EGOT full house of hosting duties -- the Emmys, Oscars and Tonys, with only the Grammys to go. 

Harris, who hosted the Tony awards and the Emmys in 2009 and 2013, has been nominated for four Golden Globes and won five Emmys, including four for hosting the Tonys. 

The Academy Awards are televised live in more than 225 countries around the globe. Organizers will announce nominations for the Oscars on January 15. 

Hosting awards shows is more difficult and prone to pitfalls than many imagine. 

Recent questionable Oscars hosts have included James Franco and Anne Hathaway who were widely panned in 2011, and Seth McFarlane whose "We saw your boobs' song raised eyebrows, not in a good way. 

Rare Comet Fly-By of Mars on Sunday

Washington:  A fast-moving comet is about to fly by Mars for a one-in-a-million-year encounter with the Red Planet, photographed and documented by a flurry of spacecraft, NASA said.

The comet, known as Siding Spring (C/2013 A1), has a core about a mile (1.6 kilometers) wide in diameter, but is only as solid as a pile of talcum powder.

Siding Spring is set to hurtle past Mars at a close distance of about 88,000 miles (139,500 kilometers).

If the comet were passing by our planet, that would be about a third of the way between the Earth and the Moon.

Siding Spring will come closest to Mars at 2:27 pm (1827 GMT) on Sunday, October 19, NASA said.

Flying through space at a breakneck speed of 122,400 miles per hour (202,000 km per hour), the small comet faces little risk of colliding with the Red Planet.

But scientists are keen to study its trajectory and trail.

"Are we going to see meteors in the Mars atmosphere? Comets are very unpredictable," said Jim Green, director of the Planetary Science Division at NASA headquarters in Washington.

"I think it is unlikely that it will be destroyed," Green told reporters. "But whether it retains its structure or not is of interest."

 

NASA has maneuvered its Mars orbiters to the far side of the planet so they won't be damaged by the comet's high-speed debris.

Even as the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter, Mars Odyssey and MAVEN have been repositioned to avoid hazardous dust, scientists hope they will be able to capture a trove of data about the flyby for Earthlings to study.

NASA's two rovers -- Curiosity and Opportunity -- will turn their cameras skyward and send back pictures of the comet's pass in the coming days, weeks and months, the US space agency said.

Billions of years old

The comet was discovered by Robert McNaught at Australia's Siding Spring Observatory in January 2013.

It is believed to have originated billions of years ago in the Oort Cloud, a distant region of space that is a source of comets that are "largely unchanged since the early days of the solar system," NASA said.

Carey Lisse, senior astrophysicist at Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory, said scientists are intrigued by comets for many reasons.

"It is amazing that they are still around after four and a half billion years, but most of the reason for that is they have been living very, very far from the Sun and are in a deep freeze," he said.

This particular comet is about the size of a small mountain, but is probably the consistency of powder, or a meringue that would melt in your mouth, he explained.

"It should have more of the really volatile ices -- methane, carbon monoxide -- things that boil off very easily. It has never been heat treated very strongly before."

Scientists say they are curious to learn if the comet may have already broken up some on its approach to Mars.

"There is a possibility that Mars may drive some more activity, that is why we are looking," Lisse said.

The comet has traveled more than one million years to make its first pass by Mars, and will not return for another million years, after it completes its next long loop around the Sun. 

Story First Published: October 16, 2014 07:10 IST    

McDonald's Explains Why Its Burgers May Not Rot

The world's biggest hamburger chain is confronting unappetizing questions as part of a United States campaign to beat back perceptions that it serves Frankenfood. The company has run similar campaigns in Canada and Australia and said it's bringing the effort to its flagship market.

The push comes as McDonald's fights to boost its performance in the United States, where sales slid 1.5 percent at established locations in the most recent quarter, following a 0.2 percent dip for last year. In addition to increased competition, McDonald's is trying to keep up with changing tastes, with places such as Chipotle marketing their food as more wholesome alternatives.

To improve the image of its food, McDonald's recently rolled out chicken wraps with sliced cucumbers and the option to substitute egg whites in breakfast sandwiches. It also plans to eventually let people swap out the french fries in value meals with options like salad or vegetables.

For its latest campaign, among the first issues McDonald's addresses are widely circulated online images and videos that show its burgers staying in tact after several weeks or even years. On its webpage, McDonald's says that's likely because the food has dehydrated, and that food needs moisture to form mold.

The company's responses to other questions such as "Does McDonald's beef contain worms?" are more direct: "No. Gross! End of story."

A video posted on the company's home page also showed Grant Imahara, a former host of the TV show "Mythbusters," touring a Cargill beef plant where McDonald's patties are made. "Are there lips and eyeballs in there, Jimmy?" Imahara asks a plant supervisor, who explains that the patties only have beef trimmings. Another guide says the patties do not contain lean finely textured beef, an ingredient widely referred to as "pink slime" that became the subject of controversy a few years ago. McDonald's stopped using the ingredient about three years ago.

Ben Stringfellow, vice president of communications for McDonald's USA, said in a phone interview that the campaign is a new way of engaging with customers more directly. He noted people are demanding for more information about products across the board, not just from McDonald's. "In many ways, it's the way the world is going," he said.

National TV ads will air soon will let people know about the push. McDonald's says people can submit questions via social media sites such as Twitter and Facebook. The company plans to respond to the most common questions with videos or other posts, as well as responding one-on-one to questions, Stringfellow said.