"The Grand Egyptian Museum will open 12 halls with exhibits about ancient Egypt starting this week ahead of the still-unannounced official opening. … The museum, a mega-project near the Giza Pyramids which has cost well over $1 billion so far, will open the halls for 4,000 visitors per day starting Wednesday." - AP
"Fan Bingbing, once one of China’s most famous film stars, is returning to the screen after a more than five-year hiatus following her alleged involvement in a massive tax evasion scandal." - The Guardian
"'The law applies to all Afghanistan … and it will be implemented gradually," (said) the spokesman for the Ministry for the Propagation of Virtue and the Prevention of Vice, adding that officials would work to persuade people (and) "coercion has no place in the implementation of the law.'" - AFP (MSN)
"The BBC plans to make a net reduction of 130 roles in its news and current affairs department, ending (flagship) interview programme Hardtalk, tech show Click and the Asian Network’s bespoke news service as part of a £24 million cost-cutting drive." - Press Gazette (UK)
"ByteDance, the Chinese technology giant that owns TikTok, made an initial move into publishing digital books last year. Now the company’s publishing imprint, 8th Note Press, is planning to significantly expand its retail footprint by publishing print editions and selling them in physical bookstores." - The New York Times
"Egyptian and German experts have successfully restored the lost colors and glimmering metals that once enlivened ancient Egypt’s second largest, and perhaps best preserved, temple … the Temple of Edfu, which is devoted to the falcon god Horus and situated along the Nile’s west bank, just below the river’s midway point." - Artnet
No writer who heard it would touch it. From bookstores to biographers to journalists, the literary world had everything to gain from an untarnished Alice Munro. Open secrets require closed doors. - The Walrus
By the numbers, that refers to $49.7 billion in paid streaming gross revenue for 2030, nearly double 2023’s $26.4 billion, and a cool 647 million paid subscribers in emerging markets (up from 300 million in 2023), per Music in the Air. - Digital Music News
The 1969 road movie had an unusually messy shoot, thanks largely to director/star Dennis Hopper. (Co-star/producer Peter Fonda later described Hopper as "a bit of a megalomaniac.") - BBC
Organizations remain very reliant on declining revenue sources. In 2022, 65% of expenses were covered by contributed revenue. However, the rate of contributed revenue growth has slowed. - SMU Data
What he wanted to promote with his company was the idea that Black audiences—general Black audiences, like the folks Acocella probably saw applauding “Revelations”—should connect not only with their “ ’buked” and “scorned” selves onstage but with the feeling that performance can be a kind of balm, an embrace. - The New Yorker
"Now, this revival of that show is proving, with gusto, that American Idiot can be yet another thing: a near-scientific study of the innumerable ways to give somebody the finger." - The New York Times
In a lawsuit filed in California, attorneys representing Durst, Limp Bizkit and Flawless Records accused UMG of using software “deliberately designed to conceal artists’ (including Plaintiffs’) royalties” so it can pocket the profits. - The Guardian
Homes filled to the rafters with hoarded junk are common enough to have an ironic idiom: gomi-yashiki (trash-mansions). And in areas where space is limited, cluttered residences and shops will often erupt, disgorging things onto the street in a semi-controlled jumble so ubiquitous that urban planners have a name for it: afuré-dashi (spilling-outs). - Aeon
