London subway system launches WiFi service - NBC Sports
LONDON (AP) -Travelers on London's Underground need no longer fear being out of touch.
The subway network began launching WiFi on Thursday, rolling out the service to a handful of stations this week as part of a build-up before the Olympics. The games are set for July 27 to Aug. 12.
By the end of the year, about 120 Tube stations will be connected, including some which are very deep underground.
The service will be free for the summer, but users will have to register. After that, a "service portal" will be made available to Tube passengers that will provide subway updates and some entertainment information. Access to the wider Internet will be made available as part of Virgin Media's broadband and mobile subscriptions - or on a pay as you go basis.
London's transportation authority and Virgin flatly declined to discuss the value of the contract, saying it was commercially confidential.
The announcement did not mention plans to introduce cell phone service to the Tube network.
Will it work? London's WiFi network can be clunky at times above ground, but organizers are confident the system will be able to handle the challenge of providing service miles (kilometers) underground.
The WiFi addition is part of a multibillion-pound (multibillion-dollar) effort to upgrade the capital's aging subway network.
London's hipsters embrace the original creative, Shakespeare, after rare theater find - msnbc.com
F. Brinley Bruton / msnbc.com
The Horse and Groom pub is on the same site as the Curtain, a recently discovered Shakespearean playhouse in London's trendy neighborhood of Shoreditch.
LONDON - The Horse and Groom pub is known as a drinking hole and dancing venue in the heart of London’s edgy Shoreditch.
It is not known as the place where Shakespeare’s ‘Romeo and Juliet’ was first performed more than 400 years ago -- that is, until archeologists discovered the remains of the Curtain theater, an early Elizabethan playhouse.
“It is cool,” said 26-year-old Sophie McKay, a writer and part-time bartender at the pub as she gazed at the patch of pebbled courtyard under which archeologists recently found remnants of the Curtain, built in 1577. “A friend sent me the link and asked, ‘Isn’t this where you work?’ And I said, ‘Yes it is!’”
The Shakespeare fan -- her favorite character is Lady Macbeth -- heard that the entrance to the theater once stood near the Horse and Groom’s own front door. Pre-dating the more famous Globe, on the south bank of the river Thames, the Curtain first performed ‘Henry V’ and housed William Shakespeare’s company -- the Lord Chamberlain’s Men.
Shakespeare's pre-Globe theater unearthed
The remains of the open-air playhouse -- which was covered up again after its discovery -- lies in what was once the home of tanneries, factories, slaughter houses and bombed-out buildings.
F. Brinley Bruton / msnbc.com
Graffiti art decorates a wall on Hewitt Street outside the courtyard where archaeologists uncovered the Curtain, the playhouse where Shakespeare's 'Romeo and Juliet' was first performed.
But today it is arguably London’s trendiest district, known for crowded bars, dance clubs, boutiques and experimental restaurants. It's an amalgam of graffiti-covered 1960s buildings, glass-fronted offices and converted Victorian factories, giving it a shabby-chic vibe.
That Shakespeare performed his tales of love, lust, ambition, betrayal and war in a place now inhabited by hipster creative-types makes sense to East London resident Trevor Howe, who was having a drink with photographer Amrita Chandradas, 24, at the Horse and Groom.
Hipsters to the rescue? UK celebrity venue in spat with auto firm Jaguar
“It’s vibrant, alive, exciting,” said the 41-year-old artist and photographer. “It’s always changing, it never stops, there is always something new.”
Howe and Chandradas agreed it was exciting that ‘Romeo and Juliet’ was first performed where they stood -- and upon realizing the tragedy about young love was a favorite of both, they embraced giddily.
Best-preserved Elizabethan theater?
The discovery of the Curtain’s walls and a yard, which came during work on a major regeneration project, is equally exciting for the experts involved in the excavation.
Over six weeks, the World Shakespeare Festival will show all of the Bard's 37 plays, each in a different language, and each by a different international company. Renowned artists and new young companies will celebrate performing Shakespeare in their own language within the architecture he wrote for -- the Globe Theatre in London. NBC News' Peter Jeary reports.
In addition to being one of only a dozen such playhouses believed to have ever been built, the site may well be the best-preserved Elizabethan playhouse, said Heather Knight, a senior archeologist from the Museum of London Archeology who helped uncover the Curtain.
“They are very rare buildings so to find anything of one of these buildings is exciting, but to find a wall that stands to its complete height is unique,” she said.
The reason the Curtain, built in 1577, and other Elizabethan playhouses are so rare is that they were razed by the Puritans after the English civil war.
Shakespeare in Jericho echoes year of Arab strife
“The most bitter and most effective attacks on Shakespeare’s and the other playwrights’ productions came from English Puritans,” leading Shakespearean scholar Hildegard Hammerschmidt-Hummel said. “They thought the theater to be the root of evil.”
F. Brinley Bruton / msnbc.com
Graffiti art covers a building on London's Great Eastern Street close to where archeologists uncovered the Curtain, an ancient Elizabethan playhouse.
No sign of rampaging Puritans in Shoreditch these days, however.
If anything, the current rough-and-tumble creative life in Shoreditch may owe something Shakespeare, said Tom Monaghan, manager of The Queen of Hoxton, a self-described bar, club and art collective near the site where the Curtain was found.
“To think I work right opposite from were Shakespeare used to try out his material,” the 30-year-old said. “Shakespeare could have put Macbeth through his paces over there.”
Monaghan, who interspersed the conversation with barked commands into a mic pinned to his t-shirt, stood amid people sipping European beer and wearing skinny jeans and lank hairstyles.
Then he asked: “Is it a coincidence that the area has become creative again?”
More about Shakespeare:
- Restored scribble may be Shakespeare's signature
- Much ado over The Theater's ruins in London
- The Bard or not the Bard? That is the question
- Shakespeare celebrated at world festival
London Welsh file promotion appeal - Belfast Telegraph
Thursday, 7 June 2012
The Exiles won this season's Championship after beating Cornish Pirates in both legs of the final.
But the Richmond-based club were told just hours before the first leg kicked off in Cornwall they did not meet minimum standards criteria set down by English rugby's Professional Game Board for Premiership entry.
London Welsh played the final's second leg at the Kassam Stadium in Oxford, which is thought to be their preferred venue should they gain top-flight status.
As things stand, Newcastle will remain in the Premiership next term despite finishing bottom by a point behind Wasps this season.
But should London Welsh succeed in overturning an original decision that went against them, then they will go up and the Falcons be relegated.
In a statement, the RFU said: "The Rugby Football Union has today (Thursday) received London Welsh's appeal against the decision that the club failed to meet the minimum standards criteria set out by the Professional Game Board for promotion to the Aviva Premiership.
"It is proposed that the appeal hearing, which will take place before an independent panel, will be held on June 21 at the London Bloomsbury Hotel.
"An expedited timetable has been agreed with London Welsh, with the proposed date of June 21 the earliest possible time to allow for the exchange of cases and evidence.
"During the appeal, no further comment will be made."
London 2012 Olympics: Usain Bolt urges teenage sensation Adam Gemili to think hard before making Games bid - Daily Telegraph
After becoming the youngest ever junior world champion when he won the 200m crown in Kingston in 2002 at the age of 15, it took him another five years before he won a senior championship medal — a 200m silver at the World Championships in Osaka.
“The reason why it took so long for me was because I got injured most of the time in my transition to being a senior,” said Bolt. “I got a rude awakening when I got on to the circuit because I was beating the seniors in Jamaica when I started out, and then when I got on the circuit I was losing every race.
“That threw me off a little bit but I got a great coach and he explained everything to me. On the circuit, everyone has got great talent. It’s all about who harnesses that talent and trains hard and develops it in the way that he can perform to his best. For me, it was kind of shaky at first but my coach really helped me through.
Gemili, a former footballer who was on the books of Chelsea, Reading and Dagenham and Redbridge until he decided to concentrate on athletics in January, says he will make a decision on the Olympics after discussing the options with his coach, Michael Afilaka, and UK Athletics.
Afilaka has already warned of the danger of overloading young athletes — something that Bolt has experienced at first hand.
“When I started out, in 2004 I was injured. In ’06 I was injured, and then in ’07 I started to come up. It takes time to get better. It took me three years to really get into my stride when I got into the seniors.”
0 Responses to "London subway system launches WiFi service - NBC Sports"
Post a Comment