Jason Isaacs isn’t here for all the muggle back talk.
The “Harry Potter” alum, who played Lucius Malfoy in the wizarding drama franchise, weighed in on the controversy surrounding Paapa Essiedu’s casting in the upcoming HBO series adaptation of the films. Essiedu, 35, is set to portray Hogwarts professor and Slytherin head Severus Snape, originally played by Emmy-winning actor Alan Rickman.
Isaacs, 62, took aim at the racially charged criticism against Essiedu, whose dark complexion differs from that of the original Snape. The British actor, born and raised in London, is of Ghanaian descent.
“Paapa Essiedu is one of the best actors I’ve ever seen in my life,” Isaacs said during a July 5 panel discussion at Fan Expo Denver moderated by Collider. “I’ve seen some people online who are being rude about him. What they’re being is racist.”
Meet your new Harry Potter: HBO series casts Harry, Ron and Hermione
HBO’s “Harry Potter” series, which does not yet have a release date, will be a new adaptation of the bestselling children’s book series by J.K. Rowling, which was made into a hit film series in the 2000s that starred Daniel Radcliffe, Rupert Grint and Emma Watson. Rowling serves as executive producer on the show.
Dominic McLaughlin is set to play orphan-turned-boy-wizard Harry Potter, while Arabella Stanton will play Hermione Granger and Alastair Stout will play Ron Weasley.
“All the cast of the new Harry Potter TV series are amazing,” Isaacs told Collider. Critics “will be swallowing their tongues, hopefully — you know, their digital tongues — when they see what (Paapa) does on screen.”
10 bingeable memoirs to check out: Celebrities tell all about aging, marriage and Beyoncé
Essiedu, known for his roles in “I May Destroy You,” “Black Mirror” and “The Outrun,” shared his excitement at joining the magical world of “Harry Potter” in an April Instagram post announcing his casting. The actor affectionately signed off the post’s caption as “Professor Snape.”
“An honor and a privilege to be going on this journey with these legends,” Essiedu wrote at the time. “We shall eat, and we shall leave no crumbs. See you at Hogwarts.”
Johnny Depp finally says goodbye to grudges after split from Amber Heard
Johnny Depp has chosen not to carry hate in his heart, even after everything that happened between him and Amber Heard.
The former couple broke up in 2016, but the real storm came later when Heard wrote about being abused.
Although the actress didn’t name the actor, the damage was done.
However, Depp took her to court for what she wrote, and their fight became public. Still, he says he’s not stuck in the past and doesn’t feel the need to stay angry.
Depp shared with The Telegraph newspaper: “This sounds like horses*** but one can simply hold hate [until it] inspires some species of malice in your skull.
“Makes you think of revenge. But hating someone is a great big responsibility to hang on to.
“The real truth of it, that I won’t allow, is that in order for me to hate, I have to care first. And I don’t care. What should I care about? That I got done wrong to [by others]? Plenty of people get done wrong.”
While talking about the reason why he took the matter to court, Depp said he couldn’t just sit back and watch a lie ruin his chances in Hollywood. He made it clear he wasn’t going to let a false story decide his worth in the industry.
However, the Hollywood icon continued saying that he’s learned a lot from the last few years.
He added: “Going through all that in real time amounted to seven or eight years,” he says. “It was a harsh, painful internal journey. Would I rather not have gone through something like that? Absolutely. But I learnt far more than I ever dreamed I could.”
Depp once said that being pushed out of Hollywood during his legal battles felt like being lost with no direction. But even after all that, he says he doesn’t feel bitter toward anyone.
For roughly one in every hundred people, food containing even the smallest amounts of gluten can deliver a gutful of hurt and pose severe risks to their health.
While a domino effect of immunological reactions can be traced back to their genetic roots, a number of contributing factors are also involved, making it difficult to map the precise chain of events that causes celiac disease.
Using transgenic mice, an international team led by scientists from McMaster University in Canada has identified a crucial role played by the very cells making up the gut’s lining, describing a major stepping stone that could lead to new therapies.
Celiac disease is a lifelong autoimmune disorder triggered by the presence of a group of structural proteins known as gluten in the intestines.
Eating virtually anything made with wheat, barley, or rye – meaning most baked goods, breads, and pastas – puts people with the condition at risk of transient symptoms like bloating, pain, diarrhea, constipation, and sometimes reflux and vomiting.
Related: Gluten Intolerance vs Celiac Disease: Experts Reveal The Key Differences
Currently the only way to avoid the symptoms is to avoid the foods that trigger them. Over the longer term, immune attacks triggered by gluten can damage the small intestine’s villi. These tiny structures increase the internal surface area of the intestinal walls, which aids absorption of nutrients from food.
People with celiac disease – particularly if it’s untreated – face serious health risks, such as being more likely to develop colorectal cancer and cardiovascular disease. The disease is associated with a myriad of conditions, with just some examples including anemia, osteoporosis, growth delays, reproductive issues, and neurological disorders.
For roughly one in every hundred people, food containing gluten can deliver a gutful of hurt. (aureliofoxrj/Pixabay)
“The only way we can treat celiac disease today is by fully eliminating gluten from the diet,” says McMasters gastroenterologist Elena Verdu.
“This is difficult to do, and experts agree that a gluten-free diet is insufficient.”
Around 90 percent of people diagnosed with the condition carry a pair of genes that encode for a protein called HLA-DQ2.5. Of the remaining 10 percent, most have a similar protein called HLA-DQ8.
Like other kinds of ‘HLA’ (or human leukocyte antigen) proteins, the proteins hold pieces of fallen invaders aloft like macabre trophies on a class of immune cells, warning other defensive tissues to be on the lookout.
In the specific case of HLA-DQ2.5 and HLA-DQ8, the proteins are shaped to hold chunks of gluten peptide that are resistant to digestion, instructing murderous T cells to go on the hunt.
Unfortunately, these instructions aren’t the clearest at distinguishing between a threat and similar-looking materials in our body, meaning those with the genes are at risk of a variety of autoimmune conditions.
HLA-DQ2.5 and HLA-DQ8 proteins are shaped to hold chunks of gluten peptide that are resistant to digestion. (pixelshot/Canva)
Not everybody who expresses either HLA-DQ2.5 or HLA-DQ8 will develop an immune disorder like celiac disease, however.
For that to happen, those torn-up pieces of gluten first need to be carried across the gut wall by a transporting enzyme that binds with the peptide and alters it in ways to make it even more recognizable.
Cells in the intestinal wall are responsible for releasing this transporting enzyme into the gut, so they clearly have a critical role in the early stages of the disease.
They are also known to express the family of proteins to which HLA-DQ2.5 and HLA-DQ8 belong, which are typically regulated by inflammatory responses in the gut.
What hasn’t been clear is how this staging ground for people with celiac disease actually functions within the pathology itself.
Currently the only way to avoid the symptoms is to avoid the foods that trigger them. (AndreyPopov/Canva)
To focus on this important link in the chain, the research team double-checked the expression of the major immune complex in the cells lining the intestines of people with treated and untreated celiac disease, and in mice with the human genes for HLA-DQ2.5.
They then created functional living models of the gut, called an organoid, using the mouse intestinal cells, to study the expression of their immune proteins up close, subjecting them to inflammatory triggers as well as predigested and intact gluten.
“This allowed us to narrow down the specific cause and effect and prove exactly whether and how the reaction takes place,” says McMasters biomedical engineer Tohid Didar.
From this it became evident the cells lining the gut weren’t just passive bystanders suffering collateral damage in a misguided effort to rid the body of gluten – they were key agents, presenting a mash-up of gluten fragments broken down by gut bacteria and transporting enzymes to gluten-specific immune cells firsthand.
Knowing the types of tissue involved and their enhancement by the presence of inflammatory microbes gives researchers a new list of targets for future treatments, potentially allowing millions of people worldwide to enjoy a gluten-filled pastry or two without the risk of discomfort.
This research was published in Gastroenterology.
An earlier version of this article was published in August 2024.
Keke Palmer spills ‘wonder trick’ to help with post pregnancy body
Keke Palmer admits she opted for an strict regimen as she worked towards body transformation after giving birth.
The multi-hyphenate star admitted that she really leaned on Pilates and other exercises to get back in shape after welcoming 2-year-old son Leo.
“You have to get back to yourself after the baby. It’s really, really hard. Anybody with kids knows sometimes it can take 3, 4, 5 years,” she tells PEOPLE. “It really wears your ass out.”
“I’m a Pilates girl down, I don’t care. It’s the Pilates. And I need people to know it doesn’t matter what that scale says. It matters about the muscles. That’s what I love about Pilates. It don’t matter what your size is, your body is going to be snatched with Pilates.”
“So if you could find a dance class, Pilates class, a yoga class, a cycling class, whatever class that you like that can happen at the top of your day before you go to work, it will do wonders. The consistency of that will do wonders,” she explains.
Keke later advised: “And then I’ll say, make your own food. I know, I know it’s a lot. Nobody wants to do the meal prep s—, but making your own food and knowing what you put in it, it does wonders.”
“Making your own meals, keeping it consistent with some type of activity. It really does transform your body,” Palmer continues. “And then fun stuff. Sometimes we forget that everything don’t have to be a serious workout. What if I just go play tennis or pickleball with my girl? What if we just go swimming for a day? You know what I’m saying? Let’s walk around an amusement park with the kids,” she noted.
24 Palestinians killed in Israeli attacks across Gaza – Daily Times
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Instead of tweaking keywords for Google’s (NASDAQ:GOOG) algorithm, brands now have to think about chatbotslike ChatGPT or Perplexityscraping and delivering their info directly. That’s where a bunch of scrappy startups come in.
Take Athena, spun out by an ex-Googler with $2.2 million in seed money to figure out exactly how different AI models find and use your website’s content. Or Profound, which has raked in over $20 million tracking how bots relay brand details, and Scrunch AI, which just raised $4 million and helped one client boost sign-ups by 9% from AI referrals.
We’re talking about a zero-click internet, where bots do all the clicking so real humans don’t even have to visit your page. It sounds wild, but it’s happening: Google’s rolling out AI Overviews and conversational answers that push links way down the page.
The upshot? If you want to stay visible, you’ve got to optimize not just for people, but for the bots they’re using. Sure, the market for these AI-tuning tools is tiny compared to the $90 billion SEO world, but early adopters are already seeing real liftsand as chat interfaces become the norm, this could easily be the next big thing in digital marketing.
The mark of a champion is always seen in the way players and teams in general approach tough games. For South African international Bambanani Mbane, taking on Ghana in the TotalEnergies Women’s Africa Cup of Nations (WAFCON) 2024 Group C opener on Monday, was an opportunity to help her team amass maximum points.
This is the third consecutive time that South Africa are registering victory in their first game of the continental showpiece that it has become a normal thing now to them. It is that swagger of a team that has mastered the art of winning. From afar, it looks easy but to a player like Mbane, this is a result of hard work, discipline in the little and big things but also attention to detail.
Deserved and hungry for more
It is no wonder that she was named the Woman of the Match following their 2-0 win over the Black Queens of Ghana – a well deserved award that will not only look good in her trophy cabinet but will remind her of July 7, 2025 as a reward for her excellence.
“I am so glad that we managed to get the three points. It was never going to be an easy game but I am happy with the three points. Going forward, this is going to boost our confidence. We are the defending champions and we knew that it was not going to be easy but I am happy the way we started. Getting these three points was very important to us,” Mbane said after the game with a glow on her face.
Teamwork makes the dream work
There is always a sisterhood that comes to life whenever the Banyana Banyana take to the field. It is always experienced when they come off the bus. They take to singing in sync – songs that celebrate who they are and what they want to achieve. These songs guide them to the dressing room and it is there that they enter game mode – more like the feeling one embraces when going to war – except this war is on the field of play.
For Mbane who features for two-time African champions Mamelodi Sundowns Ladies, her camaraderie with her clubmates in regular season can be seen at the WAFCON in every touch of the ball and in more ways than one, it helps the success of the Banyana Banyana.
A typical work day came to life in the second half when a ball was whipped into the box and to save the situation, Mbane headed it softly towards goalkeeper Andile Dlamini. The Goalkeeper of the WAFCON 2022 who was having a field day saving her team from all manner of attack thanks to a spirited Ghana side, picked up the headed pass and went on with her business like it was something they had talked about.
“Those two know each other from club level. Their communication skills are on another level. It is almost like they can premeditate what the other is going to do. I am never worried about them. I saw that moment and it speaks to their maturity and understanding of each other,” Desiree Ellis, the South Africa head coach said after the game.
Mbane, Dlamini, Lebohang Ramalepe, Fikile Magama, Karabo Dhlamini, Noxolo Cesane and Tiisetso Makhubela complete the six-woman Mamelodi Sundowns Ladies squad inside the starting Banyana Banyana lineup against Ghana.
Ellis also had high praise for Dlamini’s standout performance against Ghana and emphasized that keeping a clean sheet was important to Banyana Banyana on the day.
Apple is touting the new multi-user and enterprise capabilities for VisionOS 26.
Apple
While everyone was focused on the big improvements to iPad OS’s multitasking at this year’s Worldwide Developers Conference, Apple snuck some of the most significant improvements into VisionOS. Not only that, but it also revealed that the new Liquid Glass design principle that will span all of its operating systems is inspired by VisionOS. I say this is probably the biggest announcement because I believe it will enable Apple and developers to build apps that are inherently more portable to spatial computing.
I would also argue that many of the announcements Apple made at WWDC outside of VisionOS found it catching up with the competition rather than breaking new ground. That’s why its spatial computing announcements for VisionOS are so important; they potentially set Apple up as a leader in the space going forward.
Spatial Widgets Fundamentally Improve The User Experience
Spatial widgets don’t seem like a big deal until you realize how they change the ground rules of Apple’s spatial computing UI. These are persistent widgets that stay anchored where you leave them, which enables you to create a truly spatial computing environment that persists until you say otherwise. Besides immediately improving usability, this means that users can customize their spatial computing experiences in any way they like — while also enabling developers to build toward very specific user experiences. I think that Apple making spatial widgets its own kind of applet will also encourage experimentation and likely create a new class of persistent spatial computing applications.
Personas Get A Significant Upgrade
Personas are Apple’s way of creating virtual avatars for users while they are wearing their headsets; they enable users to be virtually present with a high-quality scan of their faces. Apple’s initial launch of this feature was a bit rough around the edges and had some quality issues, but I would say that its second go with VisionOS 2 was a huge improvement. This next-generation upgrade to Personas has made them nearly photorealistic, and I would say this function has gone beyond the uncanny valley that has plagued most of these digital avatars.
While I haven’t had a chance to redo my Persona and experience this change myself, many of my friends have, and I must say that I’m truly impressed by how accurately their Personas depict them. Some people have also commented that this is the first time we’ve seen Apple executives like marketing chief Greg Joswiak post their own Personas online, indicating a level of confidence that had not yet been seen.
Catering To Gamers With New Support For Handheld Controllers
While Sony’s PlayStation VR2 could be considered a failure for many reasons, it does seem that Apple has decided to potentially breathe some life into that ecosystem. Apple’s new support for PlayStation VR2 controllers enables developers to finally bring games requiring controllers to VisionOS and the Apple Vision Pro headset. Currently, the Vision Pro and VisionOS work only via hand tracking, which is great for lots of things — but not necessarily gaming.
While porting a PSVR2 game to Vision Pro may not be the most straightforward thing, there may be opportunities for other games to come to VisionOS thanks to these controllers. And if you’re anything like me and feel guilty for your underutilized PSVR2 purchase, this might be a great way to make more use of the controllers. This is also the first time that Sony ever offered the controllers separately from the headset, so you don’t need to buy a whole PSVR2 kit to use the controllers with the Vision Pro. In addition to the PSVR2 controllers, Apple also announced support for the new Logitech Muse for spatial content creation. The Muse is Logitech’s stylus for spatial computing, specifically designed for VisionOS and the Vision Pro.
Spatial Scenes Enable Better Spatial Content
One of my favorite features in VisionOS 2 was the 2-D to 3-D conversion tool for literally any image. It is still one of my most-used features, and I still regard it as borderline magical for how it works. In the new VisionOS 26 — note the shift to Apple’s new year-by-year naming schema — Apple is adding “spatial scenes,” which take this conversion to an entirely new level. This feature uses Gaussian splats that create immersive 3-D scenes that incorporate more than one 3-D perspective. I believe that Apple is leaning even harder into the success of the 2-D/3-D feature, and that spatial scenes will enable VisionOS to become an even more content-rich platform. I believe this is so important because every spatial platform has suffered from a lack of content since the beginning of time.
Speaking of content, VisionOS 26 will also add support for wider-FoV content including 180-degree and 360-degree images from GoPro, Insta360 and Canon. This should make it even easier to bring existing content to VisionOS and encourage more content creators to consider these platforms as the defaults for Apple. That said, these three camera companies have been the defaults for the industry for quite some time, so it’s great to see Apple recognizing this and supporting them. I’m excited to see how some of my Insta360 footage shot in 360-degree format over the last few years looks on the Vision Pro. I know that it’s not quite the 8K content that the Insta360 One X5 can shoot, but it’s still pretty good-looking nonetheless, and the images are still very high-resolution (72MP).
Enterprise Features To Address Privacy And Spatial Sharing
While Apple did announce a slew of enterprise APIs such as the Protected Content API, there is also an “eyes only” mode that brings even more privacy protections. While the added security and privacy features are welcome, the enterprise space is also highly collaborative, which is why it’s great to see Apple finally addressing sharing in the context of spatial computing.
This means that users can finally share spatial content and experiences, whether we’re talking about professional applications or 3-D movies and games. What I like to see is that people can also collaborate on projects while adding remote participants via FaceTime. I expect that enterprise users will also appreciate the new ability to pair all these capabilities with additional enterprise license management features such as Vision Entitlement Services to streamline license status checks and app approvals.
VisionOS 26 And MacOS Introduce Better External Device Support
Last but certainly not least, Apple has brought the Mac and iPhone closer to the Vision Pro with VisionOS 26. For one thing, a user can finally unlock their iPhone while wearing the Vision Pro, even inside fully immersive experiences. This was one of my biggest pet peeves while using the Vision Pro, which has the most accurate eye-tracking available and uses iris scans for authentication — so it shouldn’t introduce any friction unlocking my iPhone while I have my headset on. Thanks to VisionOS 26, that is now true.
The VisionOS update also supports allowing phone calls to come into the headset through the iPhone so a user no longer needs to take off the headset to answer a call. There also appears to be enhanced support for streaming applications from MacOS with spatial rendering. I believe that this reflects Apple’s approach to wireless VR connectivity with MacOS, using the Mac for compute and the Vision Pro as the display. With MacOS now supporting Steam natively on Apple Silicon, we could potentially see all kinds of VR applications becoming available on MacOS/Vision Pro. This is especially important considering that Apple is going to sunset support for Intel-based Macs and will cease Rosetta 2 support after macOS 27.
Apple’s VisionOS 26 summary bento box of the latest updates
Apple
The Importance Of VisionOS For Apple, And The Importance Of AI For VisionOS
While lots of people have criticized many of Apple’s moves with iOS 26 and the Liquid Glass design (which Apple has already dialed back in the latest iOS 26 Beta), I think a lot of people outside of the spatial computing world missed how seriously Apple is taking VisionOS. If anything should be learned from VisionOS 26, it is that Apple has shown its unwavering commitment to the platform — and its investment in the platform isn’t going away anytime soon. Sure, plenty of people have critiques of the Vision Pro, which in my opinion tend to be slightly premature. The reality is that Apple is showing that the Vision Pro is very much a development platform for the improvements it wants to make with VisionOS.
Rumor has it that Apple’s next headset will be lighter, faster and cheaper than the Vision Pro. If that headset is coming to market anytime soon, it will benefit greatly from the last year and a half of improvements to VisionOS. Mind you, Apple still has plenty of room for further improvement in terms of how AI is integrated into VisionOS, but that is unfortunately a broader problem for Apple’s AI strategy connected to its troubles with Siri’s generative AI relaunch.
I believe that Apple will eventually work out these challenges, but I also feel sure that having a subpar AI experience in an XR platform can only hurt that platform’s growth potential. There is no doubt in my mind that AI and XR are highly complementary technologies and potentially even act as catalysts for each other’s growth. While I welcome many of Apple’s VisionOS 26 improvements with open arms and commend Apple’s commitment to XR, I still think Apple needs to get competitive on AI, whether that’s from an acquisition or by accelerating current development. This will be especially important if the company wants to ship AI smart glasses — which are heavily dependent on quality AI performance and accuracy — to compete with the likes of Meta and Google.
Moor Insights & Strategy provides or has provided paid services to technology companies, like all tech industry research and analyst firms. These services include research, analysis, advising, consulting, benchmarking, acquisition matchmaking and video and speaking sponsorships. Of the companies mentioned in this article, Moor Insights & Strategy currently has (or has had) a paid business relationship with Google, Intel, Meta and Sony.
