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In the latest special series from The Darts Show podcast Wright tells us the story behind his walk-on song, the dance that gets every party started and the Snakebite persona that he adorns for the stage; Download & subscribe to The Darts Show podcast via Spotify By Henry ChardLast Updated: 03/11/20 6:29am
Listen or subscribe on:Apple PodcastsGoogle PodcastsSpotifySpreakerThe podcast includes;Both Barry and Don believe Usyk will not beat Fury and AJDon says Wilder needs help from those close to him after video rantBarry believes postponement will work in Dillian Whyte’s favourViewers need to be better informed on boxing scoring after Terry O’Connor incident
Derek Chisora’s former trainer Don Charles joins Barry Jones and Andy Scott to discuss the fight with Oleksandr Usyk. – Advertisement –
Papers filed in the case indicate that Fortnite had 116 million users on iOS, 73 million of whom only played it via Apple’s operating system.- Advertisement – – Advertisement –
Campaign ActionThe state Supreme Court, as we’ve written before, could also play a major role in the upcoming round of redistricting. In 2018, Michigan voters passed a ballot measure that takes the power to draw new lines out of the hands of the legislature and gives it to a new independent redistricting commission. However, the members of the commission could deadlock, which would require judges to step in and craft new boundaries. And anyone who has a grievance against the new lines could wind up suing in state court.- Advertisement – There’s also the possibility that the U.S. Supreme Court’s conservative supermajority could overturn its 2015 decision that upheld a similar commission in Arizona. Should that happen, Michigan will need its own supreme court to serve as a backstop and ensure the state’s next set of maps are fairly drawn.Georgia Runoffs● GA-Sen-B: Democrat Raphael Warnock is out with the first of what will be many, many, many TV commercials for the Jan. 5 runoff, and he uses it to satirize the inevitable Republican attack ads that are heading his way. “Raphael Warnock eats pizza with a fork and knife,” says a narrator, “Raphael Warnock once stepped on a crack on the sidewalk. Raphael Warnock even hates puppies.”Warnock then comes in and tells the audience, “Get ready Georgia. The negative ads against us are coming.” He continues by saying of the appointed Republican incumbent, “Kelly Loeffler doesn’t want to talk about why she’s for getting rid of healthcare in the middle of a pandemic, so she’s going to try and scare you with lies about me.” After Warnock concludes that he’s “staying focused on what Washington could do for you,” he reassures the viewer, “Oh by the way, I love puppies.”Called Races- Advertisement – Below we’re recapping a host of lesser-known but important elections that took place Tuesday, as well as a number of races that were called after election night. Quite a few contests remain uncalled, but we’re tracking all of them on our continually updated cheat-sheet, and of course we’ll cover each of them in the Digest once they’re resolved.House● IL-17: Democratic Rep. Cheri Bustos, the chair of the DCCC, has defeated Republican challenger Esther Joy King.● MI-11: Freshman Democratic Rep. Haley Stevens has defeated Republican challenger Eric Esshaki.- Advertisement – ● MN-01: Freshman Republican Rep. Jim Hagedorn has defeated Democratic challenger Dan Feehan in a rematch of their 2018 race.● MN-02: Freshman Democratic Rep. Angie Craig has defeated Republican challenger Tyler Kistner.● PA-10: GOP Rep. Scott Perry has defeated Democratic challenger Eugene DePasquale.Statewide Office● IN-AG: Former Republican Rep. Todd Rokita held this office for Team Red by defeating Democrat Jonathan Weinzapfel 59-41.● MT-AG: Republican Austin Knudsen held this office for his party by beating Democrat Raph Graybill 58-42.● MT Auditor: Republicans kept this office after Troy Downing defeated Democrat Shane Morigeau 55-39.● MT-SoS: Republican Christi Jacobsen beat Democrat Bryce Bennett 60-40 in a hold for his party.● NC-LG: Republican Mark Robinson held this seat for his party by defeating Democrat Yvonne Holley 52-48.● OR-SoS: Democrat Shemia Fagan flipped this office by winning 51-43 against Republican Kim Thatcher.● WA-LG: Rep. Denny Heck defeated a fellow Democrat, state Sen. Marko Liias, 47-33 to win a post that Team Blue has held since the 1996 election. Republican Joshua Freed hoped to secure a plurality of the vote by waging a write-in campaign; ultimately, 20% of the vote went to a write-in candidate.State Supreme Courts● KY Supreme Court: Arch-conservative Bob Conley defeated Democratic state Rep. Chris Harris 56-44 in an officially nonpartisan race that will move the Kentucky Supreme Court to the right. The ideological makeup of the membership of this officially nonpartisan body is somewhat difficult to assess, but Conley is considerably further to the right than incumbent Justice Sam Wright, who narrowly failed to advance out of the June primary.● OH Supreme Court: Each party won one of the two officially nonpartisan races on the ballot, a result that reduces the GOP majority to 4-3. Democrat Jennifer Brunner, a former secretary of state who unsuccessfully ran for the Senate in 2010, ousted Republican incumbent Judi French 55-45. Republican Justice Sharon Kennedy, though, prevailed by the same margin against Democrat John O’Donnell.Legislative● LA State House: Independent state Rep. Joe Marino only took third place in his bid for a judgeship in Jefferson Parish, so there will not be a high-stakes special election for his House seat. Republicans outnumber Democrats 68-35 in the state House, and Democratic Gov. John Bel Edwards needs the support of either Marino or the chamber’s other independent, Roy Daryl Adams, to prevent the GOP from overriding his vetoes. The entire Louisiana legislature will next be up again in 2023.Ballot Measures● CA Ballot: Voters supported Proposition 17, a constitutional amendment to end felony disenfranchisement for citizens on parole, by a 59-41 margin.● MA Ballot: Voters rejected Measure 2, which would have implemented instant-runoff voting for congressional and state elections, by a 55-45 margin.County Government● East Baton Rouge Parish, LA Mayor-President: Democratic incumbent Sharon Weston Broome earned 48% of the vote in the all-party primary, which was just short of the majority she needed to avoid a Dec. 5 runoff. Former state Rep. Steve Carter secured the second spot by beating a fellow Republican 20-13; altogether, Broome and another Democratic candidate won a combined 55% of the vote, while 43% went to one of the four Republicans on the ballot.● Maricopa County, AZ Sheriff: Democratic incumbent Paul Penzone won a second term as the top lawman in America’s fourth-largest county by defeating Republican Jerry Sheridan 57-43.● Oakland County, MI Executive: Appointed Democratic incumbent Dave Coulter won a full term by beating former Republican state Sen. Mike Kowall 55-44. Last year, Coulter became the first Democrat to hold this office since it was created in 1974 after the County Board of Commissioners chose him to succeed the late Republican L. Brooks Patterson; Coulter is also the first gay person to lead this large suburban Detroit county.● San Diego County, CA Board of Supervisors: Democrats gained control of the San Diego County Board of Supervisors for the first time in over 30 years thanks to Terra Lawson-Remer’s 60-40 victory over Republican incumbent Kristin Gaspar in District 3. Team Blue had already flipped a seat in the March primary, so the body will go from a 4-1 Republican majority to a 3-2 Democratic edge.Mayors● El Paso, TX Mayor: Former Democratic Mayor Oscar Leeser took first place in this officially nonpartisan race with 42%, while Republican incumbent Dee Margo only beat progressive attorney Veronica Carbajal 25-22 for the second runoff spot. Leeser and Margo will face off again on Dec. 12.● Honolulu, HI Mayor: Independent Rick Blangiardi defeated Democrat Keith Amemiya 60-40 in the officially nonpartisan race to succeed termed-out Democratic incumbent Kirk Caldwell.● Portland, OR Mayor: Democratic incumbent Ted Wheeler became the first mayor of Portland to win re-election in 20 years by beating urban policy consultant Sarah Iannarone 46-41 in an officially nonpartisan contest. A hefty 13% selected a write-in option, with the vast majority of this bloc likely going to Don’t Shoot Portland founder Teressa Raiford.Prosecutors● Adams and Broomfield Counties, CO District Attorney: Democrat Brian Mason held this post by beating Republican Tim McCormack 56-44.● Honolulu, HI Prosecuting Attorney: Former Judge Steve Alm won this officially nonpartisan office by beating defense attorney Megan Kau 56-44. Alm, who served as U.S. attorney during the Clinton administration, supported reform goals for lower-level offenses, while Kau notably responded “no” when asked if she believed that the state incarcerated too many people.● Jefferson and Gilpin Counties, CO District Attorney: Democrat Alexis King flipped this office by defeating Matthew Durkin 55-45.● Orleans Parish, LA District Attorney: Former Judge Keva Landrum took first place in the all-Democratic contest with 35%, while New Orleans City Councilman Jason Williams earned the second spot in the Dec. 5 runoff with 29%. (Disclaimer: Jeff Singer performed work for a consulting firm employed by Jason Williams in 2014.)Williams has adopted more reform stances than Landrum, who served as interim DA from 2007 to 2008. Williams, though, was indicted by federal prosecutors in June for alleged tax fraud, charges he’s pleaded not guilty to. – Advertisement –
The lyrics speak for themselves.Oh, Lord, don’t let ’em shoot us!Oh, Lord, don’t let ’em stab us!Oh, Lord, don’t let ’em tar and feather us!Oh, Lord, no more swastikas!Oh, Lord, no more Ku Klux Klan!Name me someone who’s ridiculous, Dannie.Governor Faubus!Why is he so sick and ridiculous?He won’t permit integrated schools.Then he’s a fool! Boo! Nazi Fascist supremacists!Boo! Ku Klux Klan (with your Jim Crow plan)Name me a handful that’s ridiculous, Dannie Richmond.Faubus, Rockefeller, EisenhowerWhy are they so sick and ridiculous?Two, four, six, eight:They brainwash and teach you hate.H-E-L-L-O, Hello.Were Mingus still alive today, I’m sure he’d have some music to indict Trump, his clan, and his racist gubernatorial and senatorial enablers.Mingus was born on April 22, 1922, and died Jan. 5, 1979. The Charles Mingus website maintains his legacy; content includes a biography and Mingus’ complete discography.One of the most important figures in 20th century American music, Charles Mingus was a virtuoso bass player, accomplished pianist, bandleader and composer. Born on a military base in Nogales, Arizona in 1922 and raised in Watts, California, his earliest musical influences came from the church—choir and group singing—and from “hearing Duke Ellington over the radio when [he] was eight years old.” He studied double bass and composition in a formal way (five years with H. Rheinshagen, principal bassist of the New York Philharmonic, and compositional techniques with the legendary Lloyd Reese) while absorbing vernacular music from the great jazz masters first-hand. His early professional experience, in the 1940s, found him touring with bands like Louis Armstrong, Kid Ory and Lionel Hampton.Eventually he settled in New York where he played and recorded with the leading musicians of the 1950s—Charlie Parker, Miles Davis, Bud Powell, Art Tatum and Duke Ellington himself. One of the few bassists to do so, Mingus quickly developed as a leader of musicians. He was also an accomplished pianist who could have made a career playing that instrument. By the mid-50s, he had formed his own publishing and recording companies to protect and document his growing repertoire of original music. He also founded the Jazz Workshop, a group which enabled young composers to have their new works performed in concert and on recordings.Mingus soon found himself at the forefront of the avant-garde. His recordings bear witness to the extraordinarily creative body of work that followed. They include: Pithecanthropus Erectus, The Clown, Tijuana Moods, Mingus Dynasty, Mingus Ah Um, The Black Saint and the Sinner Lady, Cumbia and Jazz Fusion, Let My Children Hear Music. He recorded over a hundred albums and wrote over 300 scores.- Advertisement – – Advertisement – Enjoy “Wednesday Night Prayer Service,” from 1960’s Blues & Roots.As a person who was raised on (and loves) the poetry and short stories of Langston Hughes, it wasn’t until recently that I became aware of the fact that in 1958, Mingus collaborated with Hughes on an album.Two years after Hughes read “Jazz as Communication” at the Newport Jazz Festival, he collaborated with Feather’s All-Star Sextet and Mingus and the Horace Parlan Quintet on an album first released as The Weary Blues. It has recently been re-released by Fingertips as Harlem in Vogue—22 tracks of Hughes reading poems like “The Weary Blues,” “Blues at Dawn,” and “Same in Blues/Comment on Curb” (top) over original compositions by Feather and Mingus, with six additional tracks of Hughes reading solo and two original songs by Bob Dorough with the Bob Dorough Quintet. (Mingus plays bass on tracks 11-18.)Here’s “Double G Train.”One of Mingus’ compositions that always touches me is his 1959 tribute to saxophonist Lester Young, known in the jazz world as “Prez,” whose sartorial signature was his hat.In a 1963 re-release, Mingus renamed the song “Theme for Lester Young.”One would not normally put the name of Charlie Mingus together with that of Joni Mitchell, and yet, toward the end of his life, he reached out to Mitchell, to initiate an unlikely collaboration: adding lyrics to the Lester Young tribute. Jazz critic Leonard Feather wrote about the collaboration at the time for the Los Angeles Times.Word reached her a couple of years ago that Mingus had something in mind for her to do. When she called him, Mingus told her that he had an idea for a piece of music based on an excerpt from TS Elliot’s “Four Quartets,” with a full orchestra, and overlaid on it a bass and guitar, with a reader quoting Elliot. “He wanted me to distil Elliot down into street language, and sing it mixed with this reader. “Though Mitchell was fascinated by the idea, and spent time reading the Elliot book, she decided that it was not feasible – “I called Charles back and told him I couldn’t do it; it seemed like a kind of sacrilege.”In April 1977, Mingus called with the news that he had written six songs with her in mind, and wanted her to write words for them and sing them. “I went to visit him and liked him immediately. He was already sick and in a wheelchair, but still very vital and concerned. “We started searching through his material, and he said, ‘Now this one has five different melodies.’ I said, ‘You mean you want me to write five different sets of lyrics?’ He said yes, then put one on and it was the fastest boogie-est thing I’d ever heard, and it was impossible! So this was like a joke on me; he was testing and teasing me, but in good fun.”Mitchell made several visits to the Mingus home in New York, listening to some of the his older themes on records as well as discussing the newer works and his lyrical ideas for them. “Then, because he had become very seriously ill, he and his wife Sue went to Mexico, to a faith healer, and during that time I spent 10 days with them. At that point his speech had deteriorated severely. Every night he would say to me, ‘I want to talk to you about the music,’ and every day it would be too difficult. So some of what he had to tell me remained a mystery.“Sue gave me a lot of tapes and interviews, and they were thrilling to me, because so much of what he felt and described was kindred to my own feelings. He articulated lessons that were laid on him by Fats Navarro, the trumpeter, and others.”Mingus ultimately succumbed to ALS in 1979.xToday we remember Charles Mingus, who, on this day 41 years ago, died from ALS.“Sue and the holy riverWill send you to the saints of jazz –To Duke and Bird and Fats –And any other saints you have.”From Joni Mitchell’s liner notes to the album “Mingus” pic.twitter.com/2M5v51kTb6— Charles Mingus (@Mingus) January 5, 2020Mingus was sheer genius, and whether or not he ranks as your favorite jazz bassist, he will always be regarded as seminal in the history of jazz. Wherever you are, Charlie—take a bow. Stay tuned next Sunday for more bassists, including Ray Brown, Ron Carter, Stanley Clarke, and Esperanza Spaulding! Mingus’ story is also told in the documentary, Triumph of the Underdog—a title which echoes the title of his autobiography, Beneath the Underdog.Charles Mingus–Triumph of the Underdog is the first comprehensive documentary about jazz bassist, bandleader, and composer Charles Mingus. Mingus led a tumultuous life filled with trauma and frustration, joy and creativity. Not light enough to be considered white and not dark enough to fit into the black community, he was an outcast in American society who charted his own path. Likewise, his legacy as a 20th century composer reaches far beyond conventional jazz idioms.Mingus apprenticed with people like Duke Ellington, Lionel Hampton, and Charlie Parker before going out on his own and becoming a musical force for more than a decade. When interest in his music waned at the height of the rock era in the mid-1960s, and one of his closest collaborators, Eric Dolphy, died, Mingus was institutionalized due to psychological problems. Upon his return to the music scene, he began playing more concerts and his record sales zoomed. This golden period of recognition ended when he contracted Lou Gehrig’s Disease and his muscles began to deteriorate. He died in 1979.His autobiography, Beneath the Underdog, made waves when it was first published in 1971.
Bass player extraordinaire Charles Mingus, (was) one of the essential composers in the history of jazz, and Beneath the Underdog, his celebrated, wild, funny, demonic, anguished, shocking, and profoundly moving memoir, is the greatest autobiography ever written by a jazz musician. It tells of his God-haunted childhood in Watts during the 1920s and 1930s; his outcast adolescent years; his apprenticeship, not only with jazzmen but also with pimps, hookers, junkies, and hoodlums; and his golden years in New York City with such legendary figures as Duke Ellington, Lionel Hampton, Miles Davis, Charlie Parker, and Dizzy Gillespie. Here is Mingus in his own words, from shabby roadhouses to fabulous estates, from the psychiatric wards of Bellevue to worlds of mysticism and solitude, but for all his travels never straying too far, always returning to music.You will either love this book or hate it. It is raunchy, gritty, honest, sex-laden, and sad in many ways.- Advertisement –
Probably one of the most interesting biographical takes on Mingus, the man and his music, is more recent: Nichole Rustin-Paschal’s The Kind of Man I Am: Jazzmasculinity and the World of Charles Mingus Jr., which was published in 2017. Nearly four decades after his death, Charles Mingus Jr. remains one of the least understood and most recognized jazz composers and musicians of our time. Mingus’s ideas about music, racial identity, and masculinity―as well as those of other individuals in his circle, like Celia Mingus, Hazel Scott, and Joni Mitchell―challenged jazz itself as a model of freedom, inclusion, creativity, and emotional expressivity. Drawing on archival records, published memoirs, and previously conducted interviews, The Kind of Man I Am uses Mingus as a lens through which to craft a gendered cultural history of postwar jazz culture. This book challenges the persisting narrative of Mingus as jazz’s “Angry Man” by examining the ways the language of emotion has been used in jazz as shorthand for competing ideas about masculinity, authenticity, performance, and authority.As a person who has taught gender studies, this book piqued my interest, since Rustin-Paschal not only addresses Mingus, but also the erasure of women in jazz like Hazel Scott, who I wrote about in October.Often acclaimed as the greatest jazz bassist, Mingus was and always will be a figure of controversy, as Adam Shatz wrote for The Nation in 2013.It enraged him that Miles (Davis) and the hard boppers had been given credit for his innovations. It enraged him even more when Ornette (Coleman) blew into town with his plastic yellow saxophone, pianoless quartet and ideology of collective improvisation, launching the free jazz revolution and attracting nearly as many imitators as Charlie Parker. Ornette and his followers, Mingus complained to (biographer John) Goodman, were like surgeons who couldn’t retrace their steps: “if I’m a surgeon, am I going to cut you open ‘by heart,’ just free-form it, you know? … I’m not avant-garde, no. I don’t throw rocks and stones, I don’t throw my paint.” Still, Mingus knew a good idea when he heard one. His 1960 session Charles Mingus Presents Charles Mingus features a pianoless quartet that ventured even further from Mingus’s melodies than Coleman did from his, as if Mingus were bent on proving that he was more modern than the avant-garde. Whatever moved Mingus ended up in his music, whether it was the mariachi he heard on his trips to brothels south of the border and included in Tijuana Moods, recorded in 1957, or the experimental tape music of his 1962 self-portrait “Passions of a Man,” in which he overdubbed himself mumbling in an unintelligible made-up language while his band invoked half-remembered fragments of other Mingus compositions, taking us deep inside the funhouse of his unconscious. […]Mingus’s reverence for the tradition—and his mockery of free jazz musicians as unschooled dilettantes—made it easy to mistake him for a conservative: a “black Stan Kenton,” in the dismissive phrase of Amiri Baraka (then LeRoi Jones), the high priest of black nationalist jazz critics. In fact, Mingus’s music was precisely the kind of vernacular modernism that Baraka had championed in his 1963 study Blues People, as well as a textbook illustration of his argument that black musical styles, however superficially divergent, were joined at the hip by a blues impulse that Baraka called “the changing same.” Like Baraka, Mingus viewed music as a surrogate church for black Americans. “James Brown was their church,” he told Goodman, “but they got a church in jazz, too. As long as there’s the blues.” Blues feeling saturates Mingus’s work: as Sy Johnson notes, “it’s always got its feet in the dirt.” His music immerses us in the blues rituals of black American life, while at the same time depicting them from a warm and playful distance. Given what we have been going through with an open white supremacist ensconced in the White House and refusing to leave, I thought it would be apt to open with Mingus’ “Fables of Faubus,” which was his take on the staunch segregationist governor of Alabama, Orval Faubus. In 1957, Faubus forced the use of federal troops to desegregate Little Rock, Arkansas’ Central High School.- Advertisement –
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LONDON — The European Commission said Tuesday that Amazon breached European antitrust rules by using independent sellers’ data for its own benefit.It has also announced a second formal investigation into the company’s e-commerce processes.- Advertisement – The commission’s second antitrust investigation will look at how the company choses which sellers offer products via Amazon Prime, its paid-for premium service. It will investigate the possible preferential treatment of Amazon’s own retail business and those that use its logistics and delivery services (known as “fulfilment by Amazon” sellers) over other sellers.It will also look into the Amazon’s “buy box” function, which offers customers a one-click button to add a product to their shopping cart. U.S. regulators and third-party sellers have previously questioned Amazon over which products get placed in the all-important buy box. Amazon maintains that the buy-box features the offer it thinks customers will prefer overall, while factoring in things like price, delivery speed and Prime.Vestager said that, while going through 80 million transactions and 100 million products listed on Amazon marketplace, “it became increasingly clear that there might something that we should look into further on the buy box.”The company will have now the chance to examine the commission’s conclusions and reply in writing or via an oral hearing.Clarification: The European Commissions has confirmed that its Statement of Objections, published Tuesday, does not constitute legal charges against Amazon.— CNBC’s Anne Palmer contributed to this report. – Advertisement – The commission, the executive arm of the European Union, launched a probe into the online retailer in July 2019 on concerns over anti-competitive behavior.Amazon said it disagreed with the commission’s assertions and “will continue to make every effort to ensure it has an accurate understanding of the facts.” It said that it represents less than 1% of the global retail market.“No company cares more about small businesses or has done more to support them over the past two decades than Amazon,” the e-commerce giant said.- Advertisement – In a statement, the commission said Amazon was using the data of third-party sellers — such as order numbers, revenues and number of visitors — to inform its strategic business decisions, like reducing the price of products.The issue arises because of Amazon’s dual role in selling products itself, and acting as a platform for independent — sometimes rival — sellers.“Data on the activity of third-party sellers should not be used to the benefit of Amazon when it acts as a competitor to these sellers,” Margrethe Vestager, the EU’s competition chief, said in the statement.- Advertisement –
Unlike the Vivo V20, the V20 SE does not run Android 11 out of the box – you get Android 10 instead. It still has the new FunTouch OS 11 UI on top, and Vivo is promising to roll out a software update to Android 11 soon. My unit was running the September Android security patch, which is fairly recent. The UI looks a lot like what you get on the V20 and there is some preinstalled bloatware. I found Facebook, Flipkart, PhonePe, Snapchat, and Spotify on my device. Vivo also has its own V-Appstore which is an alternative to the Google Play Store. There’s also a Themes app, which lets you customise the UI right down to the fonts.The V20 SE lets you customise the charging and unlock animations. You can also take advantage of the AMOLED panel and enable an always-on display mode. There is an Ultra game mode which lets you mute incoming calls and notifications while you are playing games, similar to what I’ve seen on Vivo smartphones I’ve tested in the past.Vivo V20 SE performanceThe V20 SE is capable of delivering acceptable performance without any issues. While using the smartphone, I did not notice lag, and multitasking was a breeze thanks to the 8GB of RAM. The in-display fingerprint scanner as well as face recognition were quick to unlock the Vivo V20 SE. Casual usage was good enough, but the slow processor does seem to increase app loading times.I ran a few benchmark tests to see where the Vivo V20 SE stands. In AnTuTu, the V20 SE managed 1,84,085, which is lower than what competitors at the same price level can manage, for example the Poco X3 (Review), which scored 2,80,030. The V20 SE scored 6,364 in PCMark Work 2.0 andmanaged 315 and 1,389 points respectively in Geekbench’s single-core and multi-core tests. In the graphics benchmark test GFXBench’s T-Rex and Car Chase scenes, the V20 SE managed 32fps and 6.2fps.
The glossy back of the Vivo V20 SE is a fingerprint magnet The left side of the V20 SE is bare, as Vivo has positioned the SIM tray at the top. You get dual Nano-SIM slots along with a dedicated microSD card slot which makes storage expansion possible. The top and the bottom of the V20 SE are flat. There’s a USB Type-C port, a 3.5mm headphone jack, a speaker, and a microphone at the bottom.- Advertisement – The V20 SE managed good selfies in daylight as well as low light. You can take portrait shots using the selfie camera, and the V20 SE blurs out the background automatically. Beautification is enabled by default, which smoothens the output. In low light, you can use a screen flash, which Vivo calls Aura Screen Light, and this does help capture brighter images.Video recording tops out at 4K for the primary camera and 1080p for the selfie shooter. Footage shot at 1080p in daylight was stabilised but not footage shot at 4K. In low light there was a slight shimmer in the footage shot at 1080p, while 4K footage wasn’t stabilised.VerdictThe Vivo V20 SE should have been called the V20 Lite, considering that Vivo has watered down the specifications quite a lot to target a lower price point. Just like the Vivo V20, this phone focuses on design and cameras, so if you are looking for decent camera performance at around the Rs. 20,000 price point, the Vivo V20 SE can offer you that. On the other hand, if you are looking for a well-rounded smartphone, the V20 SE isn’t your best bet. It sports a weaker processor, which is evident when playing heavy games. In this case, the Realme 7 Pro (Review) and the Poco X3 (Review) would be suitable alternatives. Vivo V20 SE is the latest addition to the Vivo’s V-series, and it is positioned as a more affordable version of the Vivo V20, which was launched last month. With the V20, Vivo focused on design and cameras, and you can see a similar approach with the Vivo V20 SE as well. However, to target a lower price point, the V20 SE has undergone a cost-cutting exercise resulting in lower resolution camera sensors and a different processor, among other things. So is the Vivo V20 SE still special, or has Vivo gone a bit too far? Let’s find out. Turning the phone around reveals the triple camera setup of the V20 SE. The camera module sits in the top left corner and is slightly raised. Vivo offers two colour options, Aquamarine Green and Gravity Black. I had the latter for this review, and I found the glossy finish at the back prone to fingerprints and smudges. I used the supplied case to avoid wiping the smartphone frequently. Vivo also includes a 33W FlashCharge charger in the box, which should top up the 4,100mAh battery quickly.Vivo V20 SE specificationsWhile Vivo calls this a Special Edition (SE) the specifications are watered down compared to the Vivo V20. Powering the V20 SE is the Qualcomm Snapdragon 665 SoC, paired with 8GB of RAM and 128GB of storage. There is only one configuration of the V20 SE on sale in India, and it is priced at Rs. 20,990. While you do get decent amounts of RAM and storage, the processor isn’t very powerful considering the price. You will find the exact same processor in much more affordable smartphones such as the Realme Narzo 20A and the Nokia 5.3 (Review).The V20 SE sports a 6.44-inch AMOLED display with an in-display fingerprint scanner just like the Vivo V20. The display has good viewing angles and gets bright enough when outdoors. You also get the option to tweak the colour profile and temperature of the panel.
The V20 SE runs Funtouch OS 11 on top of Android 10 In daylight, the Vivo V20 SE managed decent shots with good details on objects even at a distance. While shooting outdoors in bright conditions, the V20 SE is quick to enable HDR. Switching to the ultra-wide-angle camera offers a wider field of view but at the cost of details. Objects at a distance weren’t as crisp as they appeared in photos taken with the primary camera. There was visible distortion at the edges as well. You can take photos at the full 48-megapixel resolution but the level of detail is not as good as in shots taken at the default 12-megapixel binned resolution.
Vivo V20 SE close-up camera sample (tap to see full-size image)
Vivo V20 SE macro camera sample (tap to see full-size image) The V20 SE has an AMOLED display and an in-display fingerprint sensor Low-light camera performance is average overall. The V20 SE managed to keep noise under control but photos appeared smoothened and objects at a distance had a watercolour-like effect. Enabling Night Mode resulted in slightly brighter images with better detail, but it took about 3-4 seconds to process each shot.
Vivo V20 SE daylight portrait selfie sample (tap to see resized image)
Vivo V20 SE low light selfie sample (tap to see resized image) Vivo V20 SE design- Advertisement – Closeups turned out really well, and the phone managed to capture sharp images. It also adds a soft depth effect to the background. Portrait shots with steady subjects turned out well, with good edge detection. The V20 SE uses its ultra-wide-angle camera for macro shots and lets you get super close to a subject. I like this approach, since you get good functionality without needing another sensor, and shots have a higher resolution.
Vivo V20 SE low light camera sample (tap to see full-size image)
Vivo V20 SE Night Mode camera sample (tap to see full-size image) Performance was noticeably lower while playing heavy titles such as Call of Duty: Mobile. I noticed longer load times than usual, and the game ran with the graphics quality and frame rate set to Medium by default. After playing the game for 20 minutes, I noticed a six percent drop in the battery level. The Vivo V20 SE did not have any issues running casual games such as Among Us.Battery life on the V20 SE is decent, and the phone went on for a day and a half without me rushing for a charger. In our HD video loop test, the V20 SE went on for 14 hours and 31 minutes which is about the same as what the Vivo V20 managed. Charging was quick with the 33W charger bundled in the box. The device got to 52 percent in 30 minutes and about 96 percent in an hour.Vivo V20 SE camerasThe Vivo V20 SE packs a triple camera setup at the back consisting of a 48-megapixel primary camera, an 8-megapixel ultra-wide-angle camera that is also capable of macro photography, and a 2-megapixel “bokeh camera”. The camera app feels similar and is super easy to use. AI is enabled by default and the phone is quick to determine what it’s pointed towards. It also suggested different shooting modes and cameras based on the scene. Vivo has added an AI Image Matting feature in the album app which lets you edit photos to change the sky, add a moving effect, or even remove objects.
Vivo V20 SE daylight camera sample (tap to see full-size image)
Vivo V20 SE daylight ultra-wide-angle camera sample (tap to see full-size image) Vivo claims that the focus was on design for the Vivo V20 SE, and that is evident. The smartphone is thin and the weight is easily manageable. Vivo has gone with a 6.44-inch AMOLED display just like on the Vivo V20 (Review), with a dewdrop notch at the top and thin borders surrounding it. You get a full-HD+ resolution with a 20:9 aspect ratio, which means the display is tall and narrow.The sides of the smartphone are rounded, which makes it comfortable to hold. The frame of the V20 SE is made out of plastic and all the buttons are on the right. I found the power and the volume buttons to be easy to reach. They also had a clicky feedback, so I didn’t have to second-guess a button press.
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“She’s been on the go since the first week racing resumed. She’s been to England twice – that was her eighth run, so credit to her, she has exceeded all expectations.“She’s very reliable. When you get to this time of year you never know with fillies, but she handled the travel and produced a great run.“We know if she doesn’t stay a mile we have the option of coming back in trip, but I had a quick exchange with Michael Tabor after the race and I think the French Guineas is where we are going.”
Miss Amulet will be aimed at next year’s French 1000 Guineas after her meritorious run at the Breeders’ Cup.Ken Condon’s charge was having her eighth start of a busy campaign, in which she has won the Lowther Stakes at York and finished second in the Cheveley Park Stakes at Newmarket.- Advertisement – Bought for just £7,500, the daughter of Sir Prancealot changed hands halfway through the season and now runs in the colours of Michael Tabor’s wife, Doreen.She was just denied second in the Juvenile Fillies Turf at Keeneland behind the brilliant Aunt Pearl when caught on the line by Aidan O’Brien’s Mother Earth, owned by the Coolmore partners.“The mile was always a question mark – but to my eyes she got it well, and we were delighted with her,” said Condon.- Advertisement – “She’s had a busy season, but she’s retained her form well, and there is plenty to look forward to next year.“I think her main aim early on will be the French Guineas – we think that might suit her better. I know all the Guineas are run over a mile, but some tracks are stiffer than others.“The winner the other night (Aunt Pearl) is obviously very good – she set sensible fractions, and we knew then it would be difficult to come from behind, but we were delighted with how our filly finished off and put a bit of daylight between the fourth, who won the Prix Morny (Campanelle).- Advertisement – – Advertisement –
Jul 30, 2007 (CIDRAP News) – Acambis, a British biotechnology company, recently announced the launch of a phase 1 clinical trial of an influenza vaccine designed to provide a stable shield against seasonal and pandemic flu strains and eliminate the need to overhaul the flu vaccine each year.Known as ACAM-FLU-A, the vaccine is designed to target all influenza A virus strains, Acambis said in a Jul 17 press release. If successful, the product will mark a major step toward a universal flu vaccine—one that would protect against all strains of both influenza A and B. The majority of laboratory-confirmed flu cases each year in the United States are type A.The randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled, multicenter trial will be conducted in the United States. Investigators will assess the vaccine’s safety, tolerability, and ability to generate an immune response in up to 80 healthy volunteers between ages 18 and 40, the company said.The trial will also assess the effectiveness of two adjuvants (immune-boosting chemicals): aluminum hydroxide, widely used in licensed vaccines, and QS-21 Stimulon, an investigational adjuvant licensed from Antigenics, Inc., according to Acambis.Michael Watson, Acambis’ executive vice-president for research and development, said in the press release that an effective universal vaccine will not require reengineering each time the virus mutates. Such a vaccine could be manufactured continuously, and people could be immunized any time of year.”It could be stockpiled in advance of a pandemic or potentially used routinely to ensure population protection against future pandemics,” Watson said, adding that Acambis hopes to see results of the study by the end of the year.Frequent minor changes in flu viruses involve two surface proteins, hemagglutinin and neuraminidase, represented by the H and N in virus names, such as H3N2. The two proteins allow flu viruses to enter host cells and then exit them after replicating. Because the H and N components are highly mutable, vaccine makers must adjust the flu shot components every year to match circulating strains.However, Acambis’s vaccine involves a more stable viral protein called M2, the ion channel protein. The company said the key component in its flu vaccine is M2e, the extracellular domain of M2, which is specific to influenza A. The hope is that M2e will produce an immune response against all influenza A stains, according to Acambis.ACAM-FLU-A is a recombinant vaccine that uses a hepatitis B virus core protein to deliver M2e, the company said.Acambis also said it is searching for a similarly conserved region on influenza B virus strains so that it can offer a vaccine that protects against all human seasonal flu strains.Universal influenza vaccines are under investigation by several other groups, including the Wistar Institute in Philadelphia and Dynavax Technologies in the San Francisco area, among others.Walter Gerhard, professor of immunology at the Wistar Institute, and colleagues wrote in an April 2006 Emerging Infectious Diseases (EID) article that the hope is that universal vaccines can replace current vaccines. But they wrote that even if universal vaccines only reduce, without preventing, clinical disease, they will still be an important adjunct to conventional vaccines, particularly for high-risk groups.Gerhard and colleagues wrote that, in the face of a major new flu variant, maternal antibodies generated by universal vaccines could give newborns some protection. Also, in elderly people a universal vaccine could induce memory B cells, which tend to be maintained into old age and can be recalled by booster vaccination, to generate protective antibodies. The article said the effectiveness of current vaccines depends heavily on “naïve” B cells, which frequently decrease as people age.”When all factors are taken into account, protection against influenza virus infection likely can be improved by a universal vaccine,” the authors wrote.See also:Aug 25, 2005, CIDRAP News story “Acambis hopes to build a flu vaccine that lasts”Apr 2006 EID article on prospects for a universal influenza vaccine