Chris Hemsworth said that his time as Thor is up after he finished shooting for the fourth Avengers movie.
“Contractually, right now – yeah, this is it. I’m done. I won’t be playing the character again,” he said in an interview with USA Today.
The buff 34-year-old said he just played Thor for the last time in the untitled Avengers movie. “Two days I ago, I was in Atlanta finishing Avengers in my Thor garb. It’s really been two years of non-stop. I’m exhausted, but good.”
He admitted that “it’s sort of a scary thought” to do away with the superhero costume.
“This really seemed like this never-ending thing. And now it’s potentially finishing,” he mused.
The Aussie actor has starred as the mighty god of thunder in three standalone movies and three Avengers films.
He shared that he talked to Marvel president Kevin Feige about what could happen with the character following the critical and commercial success of “Thor: Ragnarok”.
Feige advised to “concentrate on ‘Avengers’ now.'”
“It just depends on how The Avengers (movies) all wrap up,” said Hemsworth. “I finished shooting and now they are going to edit it and see how the stories play out. There are so many interwoven scenes and stories and characters.”
However, he and “Ragnarok” director Taika Waititi have already discussed plans on a fourth “Thor” movie on New Year’s Eve when they celebrated together.
“We gave cheers to ‘Thor 3’. But it also was like, ‘What could we do with four? We could do this and this.’ We were throwing ideas around,” he shared.
A woman was arrested after throwing several items from the kitchen window of a second-storey unit at Block 623 Ang Mo Kio Avenue 9 yesterday (Jan 19).
Several Stompers alerted Stomp to a circulated video of the incident.
Bystanders exclaimed in shock as the woman threw various items out of the window, including a rice cooker, a kettle, pots and pans, and clothing items.
She also threw down a laundry pole that was hanging outside the window.
A huge pile of items were seen at the foot of the block.
Stomp understands that she was arrested on Jan 19 and charged in court this morning (Jan 20).
SINGAPORE: A few areas around the world this past few weeks experienced cold weather.
On Sunday (Jan 14), Singapore experienced its coolest weather since 2016. Admiralty and Jurong West recorded a temperature of 21.2 degrees Celsius.
A week before, across the Pacific, parts of the United States and Canada experienced some of the most brutally cold winters, with temperatures falling below -29 degrees Celsius, and wind chill making it feel more like -67 degrees Celsius.
Worryingly, one emerging view was that cold winter spells suggest climate change doesn’t exist or isn’t a problem.
Even worse, were often heard comments in Singapore by people who believed climate change could be a positive development in tropical countries if it caused a bit of a chill.
These views must be corrected because they’re not true. Such misinformation also obscures the work of climate change scientists to discuss what can be done about global warming.
WEATHER VERSUS CLIMATE
The difference between weather and climate is a measure of time. Weather refers to the conditions of the atmosphere over a short period of time, whereas climate refers to how the atmosphere “behaves” over relatively long periods of time.
Put simply, weather is what is happening outside your door right now. For example, today, a thunderstorm is approaching. Climate, on the other hand, is the pattern of weather measured over decades.
When scientists talk about climate, they look at averages of precipitation, temperature, humidity, sunshine, wind velocity, as well as phenomena such as fog, frost, hail storms and other measures of the weather that occur over a long period of time in a particular place.
Winter and the monsoon still bring with them cold weather, but a few cool days in Singapore or the harsh winters in North America do not negate the fact that our planet is getting warmer over the long term.
Pedestrians walk through Boston Common during a winter snow storm in Boston, Massachusetts on Jan 17, 2018. (Photo: REUTERS/Brian Snyder)
KINDS OF WEATHER WE SHOULD EXPECT
In fact, world-renowned climate scientist Dr Michael Mann pointed out last week that extreme, harsh winters are precisely the kinds of weather conditions we should expect with climate change.
Other scientists suggest such events are becoming increasingly rare, with wintertime temperatures actually increasing in the United States.
What we are more certain about is that with climate change, warmer temperatures over oceans bring more precipitation to tropical countries like Singapore and greater snowfall in temperate countries like the US.
The cool weather and thunderstorms that Singapore experienced has been attributed to a monsoon surge in the South China Sea and the surrounding region.
Singapore experiences between two and four of them each year, mostly between December and March, but no doubt this year’s was intense as rainfall levels reached record highs, causing flooding in eastern parts of the island.
In North America, winter weather patterns are a complex interplay between the upper atmosphere conditions over polar regions and mid-latitude conditions over the oceans and on land.
While cold waves still occur somewhere in North America almost every winter, and this year’s particularly harsh, recent research has shown that cold outbreaks in North America are getting less frequent over the long term due to global warming.
OUR EARTH IS WARMING
It’s more important to focus on the irrefutable fact that our Earth is warming. Earth’s average temperature has risen by 0.8 degrees Celsius over the past century, and is projected to rise another 1.5 to 4.5 degrees Celsius over the next hundred years.
The year 2016, with a mean annual temperature of 28.4 degrees Celsius, was Singapore’s warmest year on record since 1929.
Last year was the third hottest on record in the United States, only 2012 and 2016 were warmer than 2017.
In fact, the five hottest years on record in the country have been in the last decade, based on 123 years of record-keeping.
The bottom line is while there has been a smattering of days of all-time low temperatures, these pale in comparison to the all-time high temperatures seen in recent years.
Australia’s Great Barrier Reef is in danger of further bleaching because of climate change, experts have said in the past. (Photo: AFP/SARAH LAI, SARAH LAI)
CLEAR EFFECTS OF CLIMATE CHANGE
The evidence showing the effects of climate change is clear. Rising global temperatures have been accompanied by changes in weather and climate. Many places have seen changes in rainfall, resulting in more floods and droughts, as well as more frequent and severe heat waves.
The planet’s oceans and glaciers have also experienced some big changes – oceans are warming and becoming more acidic, ice caps are melting and sea levels are rising.
As these and other changes become more pronounced in the coming decades, they will likely present challenges to our society and environment.
For this and many other reasons, it is important to study climate change. Climate change affects people and nature in countless ways, and exacerbates existing threats that already put pressure on the environment.
One major concern is human migration because of the impact of climate change on water and security. News reports in December suggest hundreds of millions, perhaps billions, of people will be exposed to rising sea levels and shifts in extreme weather that will cause mass migrations away from the most vulnerable locations.
Climate change will also have major and unpredictable effects on the world’s water systems, including an increase in floods and droughts, possibly causing displacement and conflict.
Food insecurity in South Sudan has increased 500% since 2012, according to the Integrated Food Security Phase Classification. (Photo: AFP/Albert Gonzalez Farran)
Scientists predict about two-thirds of the Himalyan glaciers will be lost by the end of this century if no efforts are made to prevent climate change. More than 700 million people in India, Bangladesh and Pakistan get their water from rivers that come from these glaciers.
Climate change will also have a significant impact on food availability, accessibility, utilisation and the stability of food systems in many parts of the world. Studies have shown climate change poses a significant risk to local food security, increasing crop failure and the loss of livestock.
If anything, the cooler weather lends greater urgency to climate change initiatives like those under the Paris Agreement. Science may be able to inform policy by forecasting how severe climate change will be.
But until we can shift our economy to greener energy sources and reduce our carbon footprint, global warming will persist, regardless of how cold it feels outside.
Professor Benjamin P Horton is principal investigator at the Earth Observatory of Singapore at Nanyang Technological University.
SINGAPORE: A fire broke out in a housing board flat at Tampines Street 83 on Saturday afternoon (Jan 20).
The Singapore Civil Defence Force said it was alerted to the incident at Block 867A at about 5.30pm.
The fire involved “contents of three bedrooms and a living room”, said SCDF, adding that the blaze was extinguished using two water jets.
Residents of the second-floor flat had evacuated before officers arrived. SCDF personnel later evacuated about 40 residents from the block.
No injuries were reported.
Smoke seen from a block of flats nearby. (Photo: Pooja Shukla)
Photos and video taken by a Channel NewsAsia reader show thick smoke billowing from the second floor of a maisonette unit and the view was hazy from a couple of blocks away.
SINGAPORE: Cycling around Bedok is now safer and more convenient with the completion of a 13km network of dedicated cycling paths.
The paths, painted in red, connect cyclists or riders of personal mobility devices between their homes and major transport nodes in the town. The marked paths also help pedestrians keep a better look out for bicycles coming their way.
Bedok is the second town after Ang Mo Kio to feature red cycling paths, said the Land Transport Authority (LTA) in a media release on Saturday (Jan 20).
Cycling paths are recognisable by the red paint. (Photo: LTA)
There are also new bicycle crossings on the roads as well as more wheeling ramps at staircases.
LTA said it will expand Bedok’s cycling network to connect to the upcoming Siglap and Bayshore MRT stations on the Thomson-East Cost Line when they are operational after 2020.
As part of the Government’s plan to make housing estates more cycling-friendly, every HDB town will have its own cycling network by 2030.
LONDON: The funeral of Cranberries singer Dolores O’Riordan, who died suddenly in London this week, will take place near Limerick, Ireland on Tuesday, the church where she will be buried said on Friday (Jan 19).
“The Funeral Mass for the late Dolores O’Riordan … former member of the Cranberries will take place in the Church of Saint Ailbe, Ballybricken, at 11.30am on Tuesday 23 January followed by private family burial,” the church announced.
Her body will lie in repose at a funeral home close to her hometown of Limerick before Tuesday’s private service that will be attended by around 200 family members and friends.
The 46-year-old frontwoman of the multi-million selling Irish rock band was found dead in a London hotel on Monday, aged 46.
Irish Prime Minister Leo Varadkar was among the first to pay tributes, calling O’Riordan “the voice of a generation”.
London coroner Stephen Earl said Friday that he was awaiting test results following a post-mortem, with a full inquest set for Apr 3, although her death is not being treated as suspicious.
The Cranberries achieved international success in the 1990s with their debut album Everyone Else is Doing it, So Why Can’t We?, which included the hit single Linger.
The follow-up album gave rise to politically charged single Zombie, an angry response to the deadly Northern Ireland conflict, which hit number one across Europe.
The band sold around 40 million records worldwide.
She was in London to record a version of Zombie with the hard rock band Bad Wolves, the group said on Tuesday.
The Cranberries’ greatest hits collection Stars: The Best Of 1992-2002 has hit number 16 on Britain’s album chart, higher than when it was released in 2002.
Kim Kardashian and rapper Kanye West have called their third child Chicago, the reality star announced Friday, opening the floodgates to hefty doses of mockery and consternation on social media.
Kardashian West announced the name on her app, later suggesting the little girl already has a nickname. “North, Saint and Chi,” she tweeted to her 58.4 million followers — to be pronounced “Shy” the 37-year-old later clarified.
Kardashian West and West, 40, who married in a lavish ceremony in Italy in May 2014, have been dogged by rumors of trouble in paradise recently amid gossip-press speculation that their marriage is on the rocks.
Kardashian West ranks 47 on Forbes’ celebrity 100 ranking of highest-paid entertainers with pretax earnings of US$45.5 million (S$60 million).
Celebrity website TMZ said the couple chose a surrogate after Kardashian suffered from a serious condition in which the placenta becomes too deeply attached to the wall of the uterus during her second pregnancy, making a third pregnancy too risky.
TMZ said the couple paid the surrogate US$45,000, banning her from smoking, taking drugs, hot baths, dying her hair and eating raw fish during the pregnancy.
A bus driver was caught on video shouting and cursing at a Land Transport Authority (LTA) enforcement officer after he was told he could not wait on a double yellow zig-zag line on Jan 14 at Marina View Link.
Stomp reported on the incident yesterday (Jan 19) after Facebook user Abdul Aleem Mohamed Saffrollahkhan uploaded a video of the encounter on Facebook.
In the video, he was seen hurling vulgarities in Malay and threatening to punch the officer, whom he thought was going to issue him a fine.
He also repeatedly shouted at him to go away.
LTA responds to video of bus driver cursing and threatening enforcement officer
In response to Stomp’s media queries, an LTA spokesman said that the officer in the video is an LTA outsourced parking warden and that the case has been reported to the police.
A police spokesman confirmed with Stomp that a report has been made and investigations are ongoing.
SINGAPORE: On paper, Singapore’s Tiffany “No Chill” Teo might be the underdog going into her ONE Championship Strawweight Championship title fight in Jakarta this Saturday (Jan 20).
The 28-year-old, however, is aiming to be the first Singaporean mixed martial arts (MMA) champion with the promotion. While fellow ONE fighter Angela Lee fights under the Singapore flag through her Singaporean father, the Canadian-born Atomweight champion holds an American citizenship.
As a professional, Teo has gone through seven fights in her career thus far and has won all of them convincingly. Her Chinese opponent Xiong Jing Nan, however, has been at it slightly longer with a record of 10 fights and one loss.
Xiong, 30, also started combat sports at an early age, taking baby steps in amateur boxing at the age of five. Teo, on the other hand, only seriously embarked on combat sports when she picked up Muay Thai eight years ago.
It is a fact not lost on Teo’s coach Luke Adams, but the American is quietly confident that she has what it takes to wrap up a decisive victory.
“I think they’re putting the odds in the other girl’s favour but I don’t see it that way at all,” he said. “Just you watch … I’m not surprised if it goes to the ground, and Tiffany will start trapping her.
“It’ll be a short story for sure.”
Tiffany Teo brushing up on her ground game with coach Luke Adams. (Photo: Noor Farhan)
Having coached Teo during her month-long stint in Phuket, Adams believes that the Singaporean has what it takes to become ONE’s inaugural women’s strawweight champion. “I think she’s very well prepared and she has a lot of experience in other disciplines like jiu-jitsu and boxing,” he said.
“She brings it all the time – she doesn’t miss weights, never backs down from whatever fight match-up she’s been given and most importantly she wins all her fights without really getting hurt,” added Adams. “She always does very well at such a big stage given such a short timespan.”
FIGHTING THE PRESSURE
Cutting a somewhat uneasy figure at the rostrum for ONE Championship’s packed pre-event media conference on Thursday, one may be forgiven for thinking that Teo is feeling the jitters ahead of her headline event this weekend.
“I’m not really used to speaking to such a big crowd though, as I’m more of an introvert,” said the reserved Teo, who was more at ease immediately after the media session. “But nonetheless, I’m ready and confident to win the title belt and bring it home to Singapore.”
On Friday, the Singaporean continued to show no signs of worry during a one-on-one interview with Channel NewsAsia, on the sidelines of her final closed-door weigh-in which she aced with ease.
“There is understandably more attention on me ahead of this big fight which I’m not very used to, but I can say that I’m really focused and prepared to face (Xiong),” said Teo. “I shut out (distractions) by doing a bit of meditation … while also visualising the outcome that I want out of the title fight.
“The most important thing to focus on right now would be my abilities in the ring come fight night,” she added.
Tiffany Teo (left) in a prior MMA bout with ONE Championship. (Photo: ONE Championship)
Among the mental battles Teo will be fighting prior to her bout are the implications of losing the title bout itself, according to her former trainer Major Overall of Team Highlight Reel in Singapore.
“When you walk into fight week, what’s about to happen during that week itself determines what kind of path your career takes in the near future,” he explained.
“There’s a bit of pressure going into the fight, in that sense. For both these girls, signing up for a title fight implies a contract extension,” said Overall. “If you’re going to have your contract extended and if you didn’t win, then it will feel awful.”
He added: “The (women’s) division at ONE right now isn’t really big enough for you to be able to bounce back and get another shot at a title fight. Usually is all or nothing, and that’s a huge pressure in itself.
“If you lose a regular fight you can bounce back, but if you lose a title fight in a small division it can be really hard to mount a comeback.”
BANKING ON FAMILY SUPPORT
Among those who will be watching Teo fight on Saturday is her elder brother Nelson, who is in Jakarta together with their father.
“It was an easy decision on deciding to make it for her upcoming fight,” said Mr Teo, who took a day off work on Friday. “Her title match is a big deal and she has worked so hard to get where she is. The least we could do is to support her.”
MMA fighter Tiffany Teo during training with one of her coaches Luke Adams at Tiger Muay Thai & MMA Gym. (Photo: Noor Farhan)
Teo’s close friend Mae Tai is also in Jakarta to lend her support. “I guess there are always possibilities and risks within the ring,” she said.
“But with Tiffany’s experience and confidence, I think she will be able to handle whatever that’s thrown at her very well,” added Ms Tai, who used to train with Teo. “She is someone who follows her heart and I always knew she would make it because she believes so much in her dreams.
“As her friend, I will definitely be worried for her safety but I have faith in her that she will win.”
