Golden, the breakout song from animated film KPop Demon Hunters, has clinched the number one spot on the Billboard Hot 100 – bagging yet another record for the Netflix summer flick.
The film, about K-pop girl band Huntr/x who uses music to protect humans from demons, has become Netflix’s most-watched animated film since its release in June.
It is the ninth song associated with K-pop to take the top spot on the Hot 100 – and the first by female singers.
The upbeat hit clocked nearly 32 million official streams in the first week of August, according to Billboard.
“Unlike other animated films, where songs are often added as a filler or commercial hook, the music here was woven into the narrative in a way that enhanced it rather than distracted,” Maggie Kang, the Korean-Canadian co-director of the film, previously told the BBC.
Golden is not the only track from the movie that has achieved commercial success. Coming in at number eight on the Hot 100 is the song Your Idol by Saja Boys, the fictional rivals of Huntr/x.
Both Golden and Your Idol topped US Spotify charts in July shortly after the film’s release, beating real life K-pop bands BTS and Blackpink.
Earlier this month, Golden climbed to the number one spot in the Official UK Singles Chart – becoming only the second K-pop single to do so, after South Korean rapper Psy’s Gangnam Style in 2012.
Official Charts CEO Martin Talbot said that this represented “another landmark moment for the globally dominating South Korean genre”.
“For the many music fans who have been to their enormous concerts, bought their merch and streamed their iconic songs, this will forever be the summer of Oasis – but K-pop’s superstars are certainly giving the Gallaghers a run for their money,” he said.
The track, sung by Ejae, Audrey Nuna and Rei Ami, debuted at number 81 on the Hot 100 on 5 July, before steadily climbing to the top of the chart.
Ejae, who also co-wrote the track, previously told BBC Newsbeat the team had known Golden would be a “banger” – though the song’s massive success still came as a surprise.
“It’s like I’m surfing for the first time and a big wave just came through,” she said.
The film Kpop Demon Hunters has also become a massive hit for Netflix, becoming its fourth-most watched movie of all time within weeks of its release.
US reports say the streaming platform is considering turning it into a franchise with several sequels, hoping to replicate the success of Disney’s Frozen.
The through lines between search and social are more blurred than ever, and perhaps no platform is more aware of that than Reddit, which has been pushing to become a “go-to search engine” as CEO Steve Huffman put it on the company’s latest earnings call.
Back in April, the social media platform released Reddit Answers, an AI-powered search functionality based on Reddit community answers. Eyeing the road ahead, Reddit has plans to unify its core search and Reddit answers into a single search experience “sooner rather than later,” said Jennifer Wong, Reddit’s chief operating officer, flicking at a potential roll out this year, but without revealing exact timelines.
“Over the last 18 to 24 months, we’ve really worked hard on developing those hard marketing outcomes that make every impression work harder — especially at the mid and lower funnel,” Wong said on a recent episode of the Digiday Podcast. “Search is in line with that.”
Also on this episode, inside the streaming service reshuffling (and what it means for streaming’s value proposition), and what the Omnicom-IPG merger U.K. go ahead says about the new era for agency hold cos.
This interview has been lightly edited for clarity.
What happened is that as our corpus has gotten bigger over time — all the posts, the conversations, the votes, the comments [are] well-ranked, well-organized, and because we’ve been open — we’re believers of the open web, and we’ve been beneficiaries of that. All of that information has been accessible in search. What happened probably in the last eight to 10 years is that that corpus of human conversation intelligence has become increasingly appreciated by search, because it’s so helpful to people, because it’s real, authentic experience. What’s happened is that we then started getting more traffic from search, and fast forward to the last couple of years over the last 12 to 18 months, where Reddit became the sixth most searched term in Google in the U.S. in the last year.
Two, the search experience on Reddit was not meeting their needs yet. And so search became elevated as a priority for us, because we believe that we should be the best at searching Reddit.
Unifying search on Reddit
Reddit answers is a prototype. It’s 6 million weekly actives. The search activity in the search bar across Reddit is 70 million weekly. Bringing those experiences together is the first port of call — just having it be cohesive. Then the second is taking that experience and threading it throughout Reddit — having search be part of your core community use case of how you navigate and learn more and navigate through Reddit. That’s the second thing you’ll see — is this weaving that throughout our own product.
Search ads roadmap
All of the work we’ve done in contextual relevance for our ads, particularly in the conversation placements and the ads and comments, that will be a helpful capability in search. I don’t know what it’ll ultimately look like, and it will take time because we want the product to settle. But our capabilities are well aligned with where that would go.
Court of Arbitration’s latest award on Indus Waters Treaty vindicates Pakistan’s stance — FO
ISLAMABAD: Pakistan on Monday said the latest award on the Indus Waters Treaty (IWT), rendered by Court of Arbitration, is in line with Pakistan’s interpretation of the relevant provisions of the treaty, which India has threatened to put in abeyance.
India announced in April it was putting the 1960 World Bank-mediated treaty, which ensures water for 80 percent of Pakistani farms, in abeyance a day after an attack in Indian-administered Kashmir that New Delhi blamed on Pakistan, an allegation Islamabad denies. Pakistan has previously said the treaty has no provision for one side to unilaterally pull back and that any blocking of river water flowing to Pakistan will be considered “an act of war.”
The IWT grants Pakistan rights to the Indus basin’s western rivers — Indus, Jhelum, and Chenab — for irrigation, drinking, and non-consumptive uses like hydropower, while India controls the eastern rivers — Ravi, Beas, and Sutlej — for unrestricted use but must not significantly alter their flow. India can use the western rivers for limited purposes such as power generation and irrigation, without storing or diverting large volumes, according to the agreement.
In a statement issued on Monday, Pakistan’s foreign office said it welcomed the award rendered by the Court of Arbitration on Aug. 8 on issues of general interpretation of the IWT, explaining the designed criteria for the new run-of-river hydropower projects to be constructed by India on the western rivers of Chenab, Jhelum and Indus. New Delhi has not yet commented on the development.
“In a significant finding, the Court has declared that India shall ‘let flow’ the waters of the western rivers for Pakistan’s unrestricted use. In that connection, the specified exceptions for generation of hydro-electric plants must conform strictly to the requirements laid down in the Treaty, rather than to what India might consider an ‘ideal’ or ‘best practices’ approach,” the foreign office statement read.
“The Court’s findings on low-level outlets, gated spillways, intakes for the turbines, and free-board are in line with Pakistan’s interpretation of the relevant provisions of the Treaty. The Award also limits India from maximizing the pondage volume.”
The South Asian neighbors have been arguing over hydroelectric projects on the shared Indus river and its tributaries for decades, with Pakistan complaining that India’s planned hydropower dams will cut its flows.
Notably, the Court observed that the awards of a Court of Arbitration are “final and binding on the parties (India and Pakistan),” and have a controlling legal effect on subsequent Courts of Arbitration and neutral experts, according to the Pakistani foreign office.
Recognizing Pakistan’s vulnerability as the downstream riparian, the Court has further observed that the object and purpose of the Indus Waters Treaty, as it relates to the western rivers, is to de-limit the two states’ respective rights and obligations, in conjunction with mutual cooperation and effective dispute resolutions procedures.
“The award carries special significance in the wake of India’s recent announcement to hold the Indus Waters Treaty in abeyance, and its earlier decision to boycott the proceedings of the Court of Arbitration. It is an endorsement of Pakistan’s historical stance on the afore-stated issues,” the foreign office said.
“Pakistan remains committed to full implementation of the Indus Waters Treaty. It also expects India to immediately resume the normal functioning of the Treaty, and faithfully implement the award announced by the Court of Arbitration.”
The moon is still big and bright in our skies following the full moon, but you’ll notice that each night it’s a little darker on the right-hand side (left if you’re in the Southern Hemisphere). This is because of the lunar cycle.
The lunar cycle is a series of eight unique phases of the moon’s visibility. The whole cycle takes about 29.5 days, according to NASA, and these different phases happen as the Sun lights up different parts of the moon whilst it orbits Earth.
So, what’s happening with the moon tonight, Aug. 12?
What is today’s moon phase?
As of Tuesday, Aug. 12, the moon phase is Waning Gibbous, and it is 88% lit up to us on Earth, according to NASA’s Daily Moon Observation.
There’s a lot to see on the moon tonight, and it’s also the start of the peak of the Perseids Meteor Shower. The moonlight may dim some of the meteors, but some should still cut through the light.
Alongside this, with no visual aids on the moon, you can spot the Kepler Crater, Mare Serenitatis, and the Mare Vaporum. Add a telescope and you’ll see the Apollo 16, the Schiller Crater, and the Caucasus Mountains, a 323-mile-long mountain range.
When is the next full moon?
The next full moon will be on Sept. 7. The last full moon was on Aug. 9.
What are moon phases?
According to NASA, moon phases are caused by the 29.5-day cycle of the moon’s orbit, which changes the angles between the Sun, Moon, and Earth. Moon phases are how the moon looks from Earth as it goes around us. We always see the same side of the moon, but how much of it is lit up by the Sun changes depending on where it is in its orbit. This is how we get full moons, half moons, and moons that appear completely invisible. There are eight main moon phases, and they follow a repeating cycle:
New Moon – The moon is between Earth and the sun, so the side we see is dark (in other words, it’s invisible to the eye).
Waxing Crescent – A small sliver of light appears on the right side (Northern Hemisphere).
First Quarter – Half of the moon is lit on the right side. It looks like a half-moon.
Waxing Gibbous – More than half is lit up, but it’s not quite full yet.
Full Moon – The whole face of the moon is illuminated and fully visible.
Waning Gibbous – The moon starts losing light on the right side.
Last Quarter (or Third Quarter) – Another half-moon, but now the left side is lit.
Waning Crescent – A thin sliver of light remains on the left side before going dark again.
Miriam Margolyes is ensconced in the garden room of a fancy Edinburgh hotel, framed by tasteful greenery and smiling for a fan who wants a selfie. Apple-cheeked and foul-mouthed, she is gracious with the passing stranger, though she warns me later: “If somebody pisses me off, I’ll say: ‘Now listen to me, I’m 84!’” She pauses. “But I don’t see why they should!” she adds with a laugh.
Margolyes is returning to Edinburgh for the second year running with an upgraded version of her acclaimed showcase based on the characters of Charles Dickens, her favourite author. “Same old cunt, even older,” reads the flyer. “It could be the last time, but don’t bank on it!”
The Edinburgh festival fringe is world-famous for the diversity of its acts, but industry and media attention is easily distracted and the appetite for bold new talent and fresh voices often equates – deliberately or otherwise – with youth. Yet this year offers a “brigade of old gits”, as the actor Andy Linden says, some of them veterans such as Margolyes who first performed there with Cambridge University Footlights in 1963, and others remarkably making their debuts in their 70s and 80s.
“I’m very lucky,” says Margolyes, whose legion of fans straddle generations and have delighted in her performances in Blackadder, Harry Potter and her appearances on The Graham Norton Show. “There’s relatively few people of my age still working.” And there is “nothing like a live audience”, she adds: “It’s like a kiss, it’s a caress.”
“I just enjoy doing it so much,” she continues, running through some of the characters she brings to the stage with “shape-shifting flair”, as one reviewer put it. “My favourites like Mrs Gamp, Miss Havisham, I think I’m a perfect person to give voice to these amazing creations of which there were very many. So it’s a bit of a wank, really,” she concludes cheerily.
‘You’ve got to pace yourself’ … Andy Linden. Photograph: Murdo MacLeod/The Guardian
Margolyes describes an “immediate feeling of joy and competence” when she steps out in front of an audience these days. Has she always felt as if she knows what she’s doing on stage? “No, it has come with time. What I am conscious of now is that people know who I am and that is really relatively recent.”
Just as confidence comes with age, so does a responsibility to use her profile to speak out on behalf of those who don’t have such a platform. Most recently Margolyes, who is Jewish, has faced a backlash for her strident criticism of the actions of the Israeli government in Gaza.
“People say: ‘You’re just an actor, for fuck’s sake, shut up.’ Well, that is a point of view. I don’t happen to share that. I think that if you have a chance to make an impact for good, to change things, then you should. I think it’s an absolute requirement, and people don’t, out of fear sometimes. They are afraid of being cancelled. You can’t cancel me!” she says.
Just off a flight from Australia, where she lives part-time with her partner, and suffering from “punishing” jet lag along with a recent back injury, Margolyes admits that life on the road can be tiring. “I’m gathering my powers and I will deliver, but it is a struggle.”
Also appearing at Edinburgh this year is Linden, a veteran character actor and one of Margolyes’s Harry Potter co-stars, who played the horcrux thief Mundungus Fletcher. This year marks the 40th anniversary of his Edinburgh debut in 1985. Now 71, when Linden last performed at the festival in 2022, he suffered a big respiratory attack and ended up in Edinburgh Royal Infirmary.
Having been told by his doctor in no uncertain terms that “next time it happens I’d need a hearse not an ambulance”, Linden is embarking on his first booze- and cigarette-free festival as he returns with Baxter vs the Bookies, a show he wrote and performs himself, charting the fortunes of an ageing horse-racing tipster bamboozled by modern technology.
“In the past we gloriously defiled ourselves one way or another, but as the years unfold experience takes a hand,” he says with some forbearance. “Edinburgh is the Grand National, not a five-furlong sprint and whether you’re young or old you’ve got to pace yourself.”
Linden’s advice for performers of any age is to take a few days off during the run: “Edinburgh can be very insular so try to do something a little different, go up the coast. I go to the football and watch Hearts or Hibs. Don’t do 30 days nonstop.”
The festival has changed mightily in scale since he first performed here, and has become “fiercely competitive”. But ageism is not a concern for Linden: the “brigade of old gits” he is referring to includes Ivor Dembina, Stephen Frost, Mark Arden and Mark Thomas.
“You don’t retire from the profession,” he says, “the profession retires you.” And until that happens, he plans to start work in October on a new character project about a boxing cornerman.
‘You take more creative risks’ … Vivienne Powell (left) and Christine Thynne. Photograph: Murdo MacLeod/The Guardian
Others are making their debut here. I come to the Assembly Rooms bar to meet two women who are sitting poised on high stools. Vivienne Powell, 76, has just emerged from the first performance of her solo show Diva, about an opera singer with dementia battling to reclaim her memories through music. Christine Thynne, 82, a retired physiotherapist who took her first dance class at 68, is embarking on the first full run of her choreographed performance These Mechanisms.
It’s a physically challenging dance piece involving scaffolding planks and stepladders. Does Thynne rub up against expectations of how a woman of her age ought to behave or what she is even capable of? She laughs. “At 82, people say: ‘You shouldn’t be going up a stepladder, somebody else should be changing the lightbulbs!’”
Powell adds: “Our society is pretty ageist, in a lot of ways. Older people can be quite dismissed for what they can contribute, particularly women. So, to be doing our own shows at the fringe at a more mature age is pretty amazing.”
Thynne concurs: “When you look back over the programmes of past years, I don’t know that there have been many elderly women who have done a full show.”
Yet the pair remain largely unfazed by their own trajectories. “It can be quite common with women”, Powell argues, “who don’t come into themselves until their 40s or 50s. And they discover talents, interests that they didn’t know they had. They start a whole new chapter of their lives.” Having worked as a teacher while raising her three children in Sydney, Australia, latterly as a single parent, Powell gave her first professional opera recital in her early 40s and later acted on stage, in TV and film in Los Angeles.
Do Powell and Thynne believe they are braver as performers because of their age and experience? “Definitely,” insists Powell. “You take more creative risks.”
“My piece is completely about creative risks,” agrees Thynne. “From the beginning where I’m lying on a scaffolding plank and turning over its width. That’s the essence of the creativity, because the audience wonder what is going to happen next, then they realise: this isn’t an elderly person, this is an exciting piece of work.”
There should be no age limit to creativity, says Powell. Her advice to those still contemplating their next chapter is straightforward: “Follow your heart, do what you love.” She raises one finger for emphasis: “And don’t settle.”
Thynne says: “Even if you’re bringing up children and juggling all these different things and the ups and downs of life, still follow your dream. And be very, very positive about that!”
Both women’s grandchildren will see their shows. Powell reads hers a George Eliot quote: “It’s never too late to be what you might have been.”
Margolyes and Dickens: More Best Bits is at Pentland theatre at Pleasance at EICC until 24 August. Baxter vs the Bookies is at Gilded Balloon Patter House until 25 August. Diva is at Assembly Rooms, Drawing Room, until 24 August. These Mechanisms is at Dance Base until 20 August
After Donald Trump announced punishing tariffs totalling over 50 per cent on Indian imports, big manufacturers in the world’s most populous country were deluged with anxious calls from investors and US clients.
Gokaldas Exports, a garment maker that generates half its revenues exporting from India to the US, where it supplies retailers including Walmart, Gap and Abercrombie & Fitch, said customers were asking if it could shift production elsewhere.
“It’s been insane — at 50 per cent tariff there is no business to be done,” said Sivaramakrishnan Ganapathi, the managing director of Gokaldas. “In the interim, brands are saying they’ll scale down their sourcing from India . . . they have options to go to Vietnam, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka.”
A broad section of Indian industry is in panic mode after the US president last Wednesday announced an additional 25 per cent rate on the country’s imports to be levied from August 27 on top of a 25 per cent duty imposed earlier this month.
Unless New Delhi can strike a deal with Washington, crucial sectors could be decimated, jeopardising Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s “Make in India” push to turn the country into a manufacturing supply chain alternative to China.
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Trump, who has previously denounced India as a “tariff king”, blamed New Delhi’s purchases of Russian weapons and oil for the additional rate, which puts at risk India’s largest export market, worth $87bn in the year to the end of March.
Some big-ticket export categories such as pharmaceuticals and smartphones are exempt for now from the US tariffs and may face separate levies. But rating agency Moody’s has warned that if the 50 per cent rate sticks beyond 2025, the yawning tariff gap with the rest of Asia would “severely curtail” India’s manufacturing ambitions and even prompt some foreign direct investors to pull out of the country.
The 50 per cent rate would put US tariffs on Indian imports on a par with Brazil and much higher than China’s 30 per cent and Vietnam’s 20 per cent.
Pratik Patel, chair of Jash Engineering, an Indore-based manufacturer of water systems equipment that generates more than a third of revenues in the US, told analysts that the tariff uncertainty was its “biggest problem today”.
“This puts a lot of pressure on the orders which we have already taken from America. We are talking to our clients,” he said.
Economists at Nomura said the announced tariffs would be “akin to a trade embargo” that could devastate smaller businesses in thin-margin sectors, undermining India’s drive to integrate more deeply into global supply networks.
Ajay Srivastava, a trade policy expert with the Global Trade Research Initiative in New Delhi, said the worst-hit export sectors, including apparel, jewellery, carpets and shrimp, could see US sales fall 50-70 per cent.
The tariff “will essentially cut off most Indian exports to the US”, said Wendy Cutler, vice-president of the Asia Society Policy Institute and a former deputy US trade representative.
Some Indian companies were under strain even before Trump imposed the extra 25 per cent tariff last week.
“Tariff-related uncertainty is definitely something that nobody has ever experienced before,” Amit Kalyani, vice-chair of automotive components and armaments manufacturer Bharat Forge, told analysts just before the US president announced the additional rate.
Bharat Forge was “engaged with our customers in finding a resolution”, he said.
Sudhir Sekhri, chair of India’s Apparel Export Promotion Council, said the tariffs could cost the sector $5bn in lost sales over the next seven months, equivalent to about half of apparel and textile exports to the US in the 2023-24 financial year.
“The impact would be tremendous,” he said. “We believe that these tariffs are not sustainable, and they do not make any economic sense either.”
Modi has not commented on whether he might reduce or stop oil imports from Russia to appease Trump. But he has insisted that India would “never compromise on the interests of farmers, fishermen and dairy farmers”, signalling a tough stance on India’s highly protected agricultural markets, a sticking point in talks with Washington.
India’s economy, the fastest-growing among major nations, is less reliant on exports than many Asian peers, insulating it somewhat from US trade actions.
Despite high-profile “Make in India” investments from companies such as Apple, manufacturing’s share of GDP has remained stuck at about 14 per cent since Modi took power in 2014, well short of the 25 per cent target he set then for 2025.
That may partly explain why Indian markets have reacted relatively calmly to the new tariffs. One Mumbai banker said many investors saw them as “a negotiating tactic”. Another believed an agreement to avert them would be reached in the crucial final week of August.
The US tariffs presented “near-term headwinds” and companies would now need to explore new markets, said Shradha Suri Marwah, president of the Automotive Component Manufacturers Association of India, which represents an industry that sends 27 per cent of its exports to the US.
Richard Rossow, chair on India and emerging Asia economics at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington, said Indian manufacturers “will attempt to diversify their export markets”.
“Even if we find a pathway through the current trade travails, such tantrums will probably be an ever-present part of US policy for the remaining three and a half years of the Trump administration — and perhaps beyond,” Rossow said.
But Ganapathi at Gokaldas said it would be difficult to swiftly pivot to new markets.
“If we try hard, we could do it in two years, but it’ll come at a cost of margin . . . new buyers would typically tend to ask for lower pricing, they will also sense desperation,” he said, adding he hoped India’s government realised shifting to a manufacturing-oriented economy required “good trade relationships”.
“The US is and will always remain a large market and if that gets excluded . . . then we do have a humongous problem,” Ganapathi said.
