Alicia Vikander's Lara Croft is a 'lost' girl turned action hero

The Oscar-winning actor plays the video game icon in the new "Tomb Raider" movie as a girl trying to find her father -- and her place in the world.

Alicia Vikander remembers being "blown away" as a kid when she found out there was a video game with a female action hero at the center of the story.

Now two decades later -- and 15 years after Angelina Jolie first brought Lara Croft to the big screen -- Vikander stars in a fresh cinematic take on the popular video games series "Tomb Raider." The new film, which shares the game's name and opens March 16, definitely presents Croft as the kick-ass adventurer fans have known and loved since her 1996 debut. But Vikander says the goal was also to create an origin story audiences in 2018 could relate to: a tale about a smart, vulnerable and "lost" girl trying to figure out who she is and her place in the world.

"Trying to adapt a video game or any other story is the fact that you want to give people what they want about the character and the world that they so well loved. But we also wanted to surprise them and give them something new," the Oscar-winning actor said in an interview at CNET's San Francisco headquarters last month.   
"She has all the common traits that she is so well known to have. But she is also not afraid of showing her vulnerability. She's human," Vikander adds. "We get to be with her and then root for her while she's going step-by-step to becoming this action hero."    

Vikander, who won an Academy Award for her role in "The Danish Girl," and who played an AI robot in the 2014 sci-fi thriller "Ex Machina," spoke with me about playing video games, helping start the #TimesUp movement to combat sexual harassment and about having a "Tomb Raider Barbie" modeled after her character in the new flick. Here's an edited transcript of our conversation.

How infertility treatment has left sperm science behind

They can make test-tube babies, grow human eggs in a lab and reproduce mice from frozen testicle tissue, but when it comes to knowing how a man’s sperm can swim to, find and fertilize an egg, scientists are still floundering.

Enormous advances in treating infertility in recent decades have helped couples conceive longed-for offspring they previously would not have had.

Yet this progress has also been a work-around for a major part of the problem: Sperm counts are falling drastically worldwide - and have been doing so for decades – and scientists say their honest answer to why is: “We don’t know”.

Infertility is a significant global health problem, with specialists estimating that as many as one in six couples worldwide are affected. In more than half of those cases, experts say, the underlying problem is in the male.
Most of the focus of infertility research has been on women, however: on what can reduce their fertility and on how that can be averted, compensated for or corrected with treatment. While this approach has produced results - and babies - it has also left male infertility scientifically sidelined.
Treatments such as in-vitro fertilization (IVF) and intracytoplasmic sperm injection (ICSI), where the sperm is placed into the egg rather than next to it, bypass the male problem rather than treating it, said Richard Sharpe, professor at the University of Edinburgh’s center for reproductive health.
“The treatments - some of them quite invasive - are to the female partner. So the female is having to bear the burden of the male’s sub-fertility ...(And at the same time), we have a very crude snapshot of what is going on in the male.”

We know that sperm counts are dependent on high levels of testosterone, and there is some knowledge of links between sperm count and infertility, experts say. But beyond these basics, sperm’s intricacies remain largely undiscovered.

“Without understanding the biology of how normal sperm work, we can’t possibly understand how they don’t work, or how to correct the problem,” Sarah Martins Da Silva, a reproductive medicine specialist at the University of Dundee told a London briefing this week.
Sperm counts in men from America, Europe, Australia and New Zealand have dropped by more than 50 percent in less than 40 years, according to pooled research published last year, described by one of its authors as an “urgent wake-up call” for further investigation.

South Africa gold miners' silicosis lawsuit settlement expected within six weeks

JOHANNESBURG (Reuters) - South African gold producers will likely reach a settlement within six weeks in a lawsuit over a fatal lung disease that companies have set aside 5 billion rand ($420 million) in provisions for, a lawyer and industry group said on Sunday.

“I am confident we will finalize the settlement within six weeks,” Richard Spoor, the human rights lawyer who has spearheaded the class action suit over the disease silicosis, which gold miners contract while working underground, told Reuters.

A spokesman for the working group on Occupational Lung Disease (OLD), a group put together by the six companies involved, said it was is “hopeful” the settlement can be reached in that timeframe.

The settlement would still need to be approved by a High Court before it was implemented.

In February, Graham Briggs, the chair of the working group, said the settlement was seen within “months”. On top of the 5 billion rand that companies have made in provisions, there is 4 billion rand available from a compensation fund to which the industry has been contributing for years.

The suit was launched around six years ago on behalf of miners suffering from silicosis, contracted by inhaling silica dust in gold mines.

Almost all of the claimants are black miners from South Africa and neighbouring countries such as Lesotho, whom critics say were not provided with adequate protection during and even after apartheid rule ended in 1994.

The six companies involved are Harmony Gold (HARJ.J), Gold Fields (GFIJ.J), African Rainbow Minerals (ARIJ.J), Sibanye-Stillwater (SGLJ.J), AngloGold Ashanti (ANGJ.J) and Anglo American (AAL.L).
Anglo American no longer has gold assets but historically was a bullion producer.

White House Video Game Violence Discussion Fails to Move the Needle

President Donald Trump on Thursday met behind closed doors with several top video game industry executives, association representatives, politicians and others to discuss video game violence in the aftermath of the fatal shooting of 17 students and teachers at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida, last month. A 19-year-old former student there, who legally bought an AR-15 assault style rifle, has been charged with the murders.
Among the scheduled attendees were Strauss Zelnick, CEO of TakeTwo Interactive Software, and Robert Altman, CEO of Zenimax Media, where Trump's younger brother Robert sits on the board. Michael Gallagher, head of the Entertainment Software Association, also was scheduled to attend.
The White House did not indicate any specific actions it would take following the meeting.

First Amendment Protection

The Entertainment Software Association expressed appreciation of President Trump's receptive and comprehensive approach to the subject.
"We discussed the numerous scientific studies establishing that there is no connection between video games and violence," the association said in a statement provided to TechNewsWorld by spokesperson Carol Rogalski after the meeting.
Also discussed were "First Amendment protection of video games and how our industry's ratings system effectively helps parents makes informed entertainment choices," the ESA said.

Movies and TV Too

The entertainment industry has continued to push violent content and has not been willing to confront the impact it has on children, according to Melissa Henson, program director of the Parents Television Council, who participated in the White House meeting.
"The video game representatives pulled out their same old talking points that have long been refuted," she said in the statement issued after the meeting. "During the meeting I was able to interject and say just how untrue their excuses are."
This was the first time the Parents Television Council was invited to participate in a White House meeting on this issue, Henson told TechNewsWorld, adding that she hoped the discussion would expand the debate to include the impact of violence in all forms of entertainment -- not only video games, but also movies and television.
"I was left with the impression that this is not the end of the conversation," she said.
The solution to the school violence problem needs to be an "all-encompassing approach," and discussion should not focus exclusively on video games and guns, said Rep. Vicky Hartzler, R-Mo., who attended the meeting, in a statement released afterward.

Passing the Buck

The White House summit was little more than an effort to sidetrack a true policy discussion on access to guns in the United States, critics argued.
There is no causal link between video games and gun violence, Jen McLean, executive director of the International Game Developers Association, told TechNewsWorld.
Evidence in support of that conclusion was presented to the Supreme Court in Brown v. the Entertainment Merchants Association, she noted, which struck down a California ban on violent video games without parental supervision.
"This is often a distraction technique that the NRA employs to avoid the hard conversation that we as a country need to have about gun control," McLean said.
People in many other countries play the same video games and watch the same movies as in the U.S., but they don't have anywhere near the level of mass shootings, she pointed out.
Further, today's video game players are not the stereotypical teenage boy living in his parent's basement, McLean noted. Many women and older adults are avid gamers.

Same Questions, Same Reality

The White House summit was an attempt to lay the blame for gun violence on the gaming industry rather than on lax regulations that allow access to assault rifles, said Lewis Ward, research director of gaming and VR/AR at IDC.

The ESA is correct on the science in his view.

"The connection between playing video games, and even shooters, and being more likely to shoot people in real life is extremely weak," Ward told TechNewsWorld.

"At the end of the day, I very much doubt that we'll see publishers like ZeniMax or Take Two or Activision voluntarily ratchet back the games they make that use guns and turn to making hidden object puzzle games because the president wagged a finger at them," he said.

Past attempts to link video games and violence have failed, because the arguments have been baseless or inconclusive, noted Charles King, principal analyst at Pund-IT.

The White House meeting on Thursday isn't likely to change that, he told TechNewsWorld. "It's a bit like asking the same discredited questions over and over again in the belief that if you do so often enough, that reality will finally come around your way."

The more opioids doctors prescribe, the more money they make

As tens of thousands of Americans die from prescription opioid overdoses each year, an exclusive analysis by CNN and researchers at Harvard University found that opioid manufacturers are paying physicians huge sums of money -- and the more opioids a doctor prescribes, the more money he or she makes.

In 2014 and 2015, opioid manufacturers paid hundreds of doctors across the country six-figure sums for speaking, consulting and other services. Thousands of other doctors were paid over $25,000 during that time.

Physicians who prescribed particularly large amounts of the drugs were the most likely to get paid.

"This is the first time we've seen this, and it's really important," said Dr. Andrew Kolodny, a senior scientist at the Institute for Behavioral Health at the Heller School for Social Policy and Management at Brandeis University, where he is co-director of the Opioid Policy Research Collaborative.

"It smells like doctors being bribed to sell narcotics, and that's very disturbing," said Kolodny, who is also the executive director of Physicians for Responsible Opioid Prescribing.

Help our kids change the world through four major problems

Every generation inherits the problems and injustices the previous ones failed to solve.

Our kids' generation -- post-millennials, Generation Z, iGen, whatever name we or they settle on -- will have at least four big issues to own. Older problems will still need to be refought (poverty, reproductive rights, gender and race equality, drug abuse and violence), but the legacy of today's youth may lie in cutting the Gordian knots of four relatively new ones: gun control, global warming, obesity and screen time.

We have broken the cardinal/camping rule of leaving things better than we found them. Our kids, I hope, will turn the tide, especially if we help them.

Guns

The problem of children being injured and killed from guns is not only dire but non-political. Everyone wants fewer kids dying. Yet gun deaths continue to rise. Federal research into those deaths -- the unbiased insights that would help us reach better public safety policy -- barely exists. And many laws that currently try to slow the stockpiling of weapons or to make them less deadly, or harder to access for some, are being repealed, full of loopholes or otherwise ineffective.

Generation Z was born, by some definitions, between 1998 and 2012. The Columbine school massacre (15 killed) was in 1999, and the Newtown massacre (26 killed) was 2012. Today, our kids are dying in our homes and classrooms from guns at a rate of more than a hundred every month. Theirs is the "school shooting generation," as college students referred to themselves talking to conservative New York Times columnist David Brooks. It's not as catchy as "Z" or "iGen" but, tragically, more accurate.

Turning the tide on this violence can't come soon enough. Baby boomers, Gen Xers and millennials have largely considered the problem intractable. And Gen Z is calling "BS" on that as it struggles to save itself.

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The solution is simple, if difficult. It's fewer guns. There will always be mental illness. There will always be anger, accidents and suicidal tendencies. But there haven't always been so many guns lying around to make those predilections as deadly. Gun rights supporters, progressive voters and the many shades in between have plenty of common ground when it comes to keeping guns out of the hands of kids and those who would do them harm.

Global warming

We know the facts about global warming. And so do our kids. But awareness is not enough.

We've made some effort, globally and in our own behavior. Yet the inconvenient truth remains that global warming keeps getting worse; we see and feel the effects already. Unless we make big changes soon, it will be worse for our kids and their kids.

Lest our grandchildren live through the next and permanent Dust Bowl, Generation Z will need to take the drastic steps we have been too greedy and cowardly to take.

The solution is simple, if difficult. It's higher emission standards, investing in alternative energy sources, changes to the food supply and stopping deforestation. Some remedies are at the personal level, but most are at the federal and global, and that requires mass mobilization. It's going to be up to our kids to get involved and us to inspire and show them how.

Screen time

Generation X grew up without the internet and screens in their pockets. And we're now raising Generation Z, aka iGen -- identified by this ubiquity. We are just beginning to understand the impact that all these smartphones, tablets and devices are having on our relationships, learning, behavior and emotional health. Most of it is not good.

We know that distracted driving is helping reverse years of decline in car fatalities. We know that half of teens today say they feel addicted to smartphones. And we are modeling bad behavior in this area, including temporarily ignoring our kids in conversation or while driving a car to look at the tiny computers in our pockets.

While we continue to find our way, it will probably be our children teaching us what kind of balanced and healthy relationship we need to have with our personal technology. We can't lose touch with what we, as humans, value more than the instant gratification and narcissistic sharing of photos and other banalities.

The solution is simple, if difficult. We need a moderate, utilitarian use of screens in our lives. Maybe it's a couple of hours a day, maybe less. We also need vacations from our screens. It requires self-control and a higher degree of mindfulness about the best use of our time, energy and focus.

Obesity

This global epidemic doesn't get as much coverage as the other three issues, and therefore there is less visibility on the effects obesity is having on culture, governments and the economy.

What we know is that the mortality rate due to obesity will soon outpace that of malnutrition. In the US, obesity and its related diseases are responsible for about 400,000 deaths per year, about the same as smoking -- but while smoking rates are decreasing, obesity is on the rise. Obesity is linked to many health problems, including Type 2 diabetes, heart disease and some cancers.

The solution is simple, if difficult. We need to change our eating habits -- which begins with kids -- and the availability and cost of certain kinds of food. We need to change our relationship to movement, infusing it often and everywhere so we are less sedentary. We need to force the food industry and government policy to partner with us.

We are here to help point the way

These issues are not really just the problems of our children, of course. We must help them help save the world. We can be honest with our kids and ourselves about how our behaviour affects the planet. We can talk about these issues and foster awareness and maybe activism at early ages. And we can frame these issues for them, as ones that will need dedication and solutions that previous generations haven't given or found.

We need to inspire. We need rekindle the spark of idealism and change we may have inherited from our latter-day hippie parents. And we must stifle our stereotypical cynicism about the unfulfilled promise of those same baby boomers.

Our generation can still make a difference, and that difference can be as parents and role models to the young. While we're encouraging our children to play team sports, be creative and learn math, we can also encourage social change.

We must hand our kids the seeds of change, and help them till the soil, and reinforce the lesson they learned during bedtime readings of Dr. Seuss' "The Lorax": "Unless someone like you cares a whole awful lot, nothing is going to get better. It's not."

Rollerskating robot to the rescue

Researchers in Zurich are teaching a robot how to balance on wheels attached to its four legs.
The goal is to help it complete search and rescue missions and other tasks in less time.

Is vegetarian fast food actually good for you?

Plant-based diets have been associated with many health benefits, including a reduced risk of obesity, heart disease and Type 2 diabetes. So it might naturally follow that vegetarian fast food, which is inherently plant-based, would be more nutritionally appealing than its traditional relatives.

The truth is that, although the notion works in many cases, it's not a guiding food principle you can count on.

"Just because a restaurant or fast food menu item says it's vegetarian or vegan, it doesn't mean that it's automatically 'healthy.' It can have just as much, if not more, calories, saturated fat and sodium as non-vegetarian options," said Sharon Palmer, a registered dietitian and author of "Plant-Powered for Life."

It makes sense. After all, ingredients contribute calories, whether plant-based or not. And while fiber and protein can be higher in vegetarian meals, thanks to plentiful amounts of beans, vegetables and whole grains, so can things such as saturated fat and sodium, depending on how the food is prepared (fried vs. grilled, for example) and the amount of cheese and condiments a meal contains.

"Vegetarian and vegan food options that are deep-fried, covered in cheese or creamy sauces and piled over huge portions of fries, rice, wraps or breads may not be the healthiest option on the menu," Palmer said.

For example, Veggie Grill's Fala-Full sandwich -- two pitas filled with falafel, hummus, pepperoncini and schug and tzatziki sauces, with a side of tabbouleh --- has 1,100 calories, 10 grams of saturated fat and more than a day's worth of sodium (2,380 milligrams). That's more than double the calories, 2½ times the sodium and the same amount of saturated fat as a McDonald's Big Mac. (A Big Mac has 540 calories, 950 milligrams of sodium and 10 grams of saturated fat).

On the other hand, the Veggie Grill's grilled "chickin' " sandwich made with soybean, wheat and pea-based protein has only 530 calories, 900 milligrams of sodium and 3 grams of saturated fat.

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The takeaway: Menu items can vary widely, depending on the type and amount of ingredients used, and sauces and deep frying will contribute extra calories, fat and sodium.

Speaking of burgers, the Amy Burger at Amy's Drive Thru -- a meat-free fast food restaurant with ambition to expand to other markets, owned by the company that makes Amy's vegetarian supermarket foods nationwide -- includes two veggie patties with cheese and sauce. The burger has 770 calories, 10 grams of saturated fat, 33 grams of protein, 9 grams of fiber and 1,420 milligrams of sodium. Veggie Grill's Beyond Burger with a single patty has more saturated fat (13 grams) and the same amount of sodium as Amy's.

Elon Musk's Boring Company tunnel plans put buses in fast lane

Elon Musk is now interested in making the public bus of the future.

First he gave us hyperloop. Then the serial CEO and iconoclast created the Boring Company to dig networks of urban tunnels that bypass traffic using high-speed electric "skates" shooting cars around the underground. Now he says both new forms of transportation will prioritize mass transit, specifically pedestrians and cyclists, over cars.

Previously, the Boring Company showed off renderings of a system that lowers individual cars from the street level down into an underground high-speed network, but now Musk, who's also CEO of Tesla and SpaceX, says the carless will get first priority.

"Will still transport cars, but only after all personalized mass transit needs are met," Musk tweeted Friday. "It's a matter of courtesy & fairness. If someone can't afford a car, they should go first."

In December, Musk got into a war of words on Twitter with public transit policy expert Jarrett Walker. Walker accused Musk of harboring a "hatred of sharing space with strangers" and Musk responded, calling Walker a "sanctimonious idiot."
Musk now wants to reiterate that he's a fan of public transit by basically reinventing the city bus to go faster than ever before.
"I guess you could say it's a 150 mph, underground, autonomous, electric bus that automatically switches between tunnels and lifts. So, yes, a bus," he wrote on Twitter.

Musk went on to describe the Boring Company's urban loop system as having "1000's of small stations the size of a single parking space that take you very close to your destination & blend seamlessly into the fabric of a city, rather than a small number of big stations like a subway."
So yet another audacious vision from the guy who wants to move us to Mars and merge our brains with computers. That's not to say this plan should be written off, however. Musk and SpaceX did just launch the world's largest rocket and build one of America's most valuable automakers.
He's also already started digging underground tunnels in Los Angeles and has plans in place to do the same on the East Coast of the US.