Harvard student trapped in Egypt, mourns friend killed

In Egypt for an internship, Michelle Hu's friend was killed when he went to take pictures of the protests.

INDIANAPOLIS -- Michelle Hu lives on an island on the Nile River, two miles from where violent protests are unfolding in Egypt's Tahrir Square.

It's an island that, for now, has made the 21-year-old government student at Harvard an unintended prisoner, afraid to venture out as protesters clash over the removal of Egyptian President Mohammed Morsi.

The tumult has hit her hard, too.

She was messaging her close friend Andrew Pochter, 21, when she heard about an American who was killed in Alexandria on June 28. She wrote she was glad she didn't goto Alexandria and that she was worried about him.

"I didn't receive a response," Hu, a Carmel High School graduate, told The Indianapolis Star in an exclusive interview by email.

At Google Glass 'basecamp' lucky newbies get specs

ALAMEDA, Calif. — As shopping experiences go, this one is about as out there as the product being purchased.

Sitting at a table inside a sun-streaked decommissioned air traffic control tower overlooking San Francisco Bay, Krystal Liu, 22, slowly lifts the lid off a big lily-white box and shrieks.

"Wow, it's so … beautiful," Liu says as she ogles her titanium-and-white-plastic Google Glass, a $1,500 graduation-timed gift that she plans to take on her summer travels to Tibet and China. "My phone is always glued to my hand, so maybe using this will give me an extra one. This is a new chapter in technology."

It's certainly a new chapter for Google. After making its name and fortune in search and software, the California titan is using Glass to leap into both the hardware and retail space.

Some 10,000 Glass Explorers — winners of an online contest who agreed to pay list price — receive the cyborg-like apparatus over the course of this summer, while the rest of the world comes on line in 2014.

Besides being first on their respective blocks with a futuristic wearable computer, Explorers provide feedback to engineers largely through comments collected via an online community dedicated to Glass pioneers.

Kerry Washington weds Nnamdi Asomugha

The couple wed last month in Idaho.

Kerry Washington is a married lady!

The Scandal actress tied the knot with San Francisco 49ers cornerback Nnamdi Asomugha in a secret ceremony on June 24 in Hailey, Idaho, reports E! News and ET.

Details are scarce, but the marriage certificate states that Washington's mother Valerie and father Earl served as witnesses at the private ceremony.

This is the first marriage for Washington, 36. She was last romantically linked to ex-fiancé David Moscow before they split in 2007.

Washington is currently on the cover of the July issue Vanity Fair, keeping the conversation focused on her career, not her personal life.
Sneaky!

Ford Mustang takes wing with Air Force Thunderbirds

If you miss seeing the Air Force's Thunderbirds jet demonstration team performing, Ford has come up with the next-best thing -- a Mustang that has the same paint job and flies along the pavement.

In April, the Thunderbirds suspended all their 2013 shows due to the federal budget cuts. Just because the team's F-16 fighters remain grounded doesn't mean the pilots still can't be honored with a special car.

The 2014 Mustang GT was donated by Ford for charity, and it will be sold at the Experimental Air Association show in Oshkosh, Wis., on Aug. 1. Benefits go to the EAA's Young Eagles program, which provides free flights for kids interested in aviation.

Every year, Ford decorates a Mustang for the occasion of the big air show, often with a military theme.

"The dedication and excellence displayed by the United States Air Force Thunderbirds are qualities we also celebrate at Ford," said Edsel B. Ford II, a member of the Ford board of directors. "With this year's beautiful U.S. Air Force Thunderbirds Edition Mustang, we've captured the recognizable symbols of their stature and paired it with the innovation our Ford design and engineering teams build into all of our products.

Lions 2013: George Smith recalled to Australia starting XV for third and decisive Test in Sydney

Australia coach Robbie Deans has said the combination of "fresh legs and experience" were the determining factors in his decision to recall veteran flanker George Smith to his starting XV to face the British and Irish Lions in the series decider in Sydney on Saturday.

 Smith, 32, will become only the fourth ever Wallaby to have played against the Lions on two separate tours - joining 'Slaggy' Miller, John Thornett and Peter Johnson, who were all involved in the 1959 and 1967 tours.

Smith, who played his last international for the Wallabies almost four years ago, is the sole change to the side that kept the series alive with their 16-15 victory in the second Test in Brisbane, coming in for Michael Hooper, who drops to the bench.

Hooper replaces Liam Gill on the bench while the only other change sees back row forward Ben McCalman come in for centre Rob Horne as Deans opts for a six-to-two split between forwards and backs, with Nick Phipps and Jesse Mogg covering all the backline positions.

"He's class, isn't he?" said Deans of Smith. "To have achieved what George has throughout his career, and return to play at the highest level, after such a long break, is a testament to the quality of the man, both as a person, and as a player.

Why Nicole Farhi is past its prime

The fashion world is full of newer labels and designers that do what Nicole Farhi once did but better, writes Luke Leitch.


Nicole Farhi is not yet quite kaput. But should it fail to recover in the intensive care unit of administration a post-mortem will reveal three combined causes of death; complacency, mismanagement, and the rise of younger, hungrier competitors.

The rot probably set in before Farhi and her ex-husband Stephen Marks sold out of the business in 2010.

Long gone, by then, were the days when Farhi epitomised a languid, easy, but self-consciously intellectual elegance that was so beloved of Hampstead ladies in the 1990s.

Farhi's own persona was, in its time, terribly compelling: this vintage Porsche driving, unruly-haired French expatriate was a designer who didn't tell women what to wear, but how to be - and that was to be rather like her.

Farhi's café and shop on New Bond Street were for a time an extension of the Almeida Theatre and River Café circuit, and the clothes - predominantly loose, tasteful separates for both men and women fitted the clientele perfectly.

Private Lives, Gielgud Theatre, review

This superb revival of Noel Coward's play supplies two hours of comic bliss, says Charles Spencer.

It’s hard to believe that Private Lives (1930) is even older than the Rolling Stones. For while Mick and Keef now seem like a geriatric parody of their former selves this is a comedy that in Jonathan Kent’s superb production feels forever young, fresh and delightful

It’s not always like that of course. In lesser productions Coward’s epigrammatic one-liners can seem tired and mannered, and if there is no coup-de-foudre between the actors playing Elyot and Amanda the play can seem a self-regarding bore.

Here however the chemistry proves spectacularly combustible. I didn’t think I would ever see a sexier Private Lives than the one starring Alan Rickman and Lindsay Duncan more than a dozen years ago but the sense of unbuttoned intimacy and desire between Anna Chancellor’s Amanda and Toby Stephens’s Elyot proves even stronger. As Chancellor put it in a Telegraph interview “you think these two must really be at it.”

You sense this from the opening scene when the divorced couple meet on their adjoining balconies at the Deauville hotel where each is spending the first night of their honeymoon with new partners.