Breitling releases the Navitimer B02 Chronograph 41 Cosmonaute Scott Carpenter Centenary – a platinum-cased, 50-piece limited edition marking what would have been astronaut Scott Carpenter's 100th birthday (born 1 May 1925). Navitimer in honor of John carpenter, Mercury 7 Astronaut. The new Centenary edition revives that legacy.
Carpenter had requested practical modifications: a 24-hour dial – a solution to the confusing cycle of sunrises astronauts experienced every 90 minutes in orbit-, a wider bezel for gloved hands and a stretch-metal bracelet to fit over his suit.
Breitling’s founder, Willy Breitling, delivered the original custom watch to Carpenter just days before launch – a fast-tracked collaboration emblematic of the early space era’s urgency and ingenuity.
Recent coverage from the Financial Times suggests so. The Behike 58, aka BHK 58, a hefty, 7-inch, 58-ring gauge cigar, has been making a splash since its release at Havana’s Habanos Festival, impressing with its creamy, chocolatey notes and balanced finish.
The Behike —the name means a doctor or chieftain of the Tainos, the indigenous tribe of Cuba—, was launched in 2010 and celebrated its 15th anniversary at this year’s Festival del Habano in Havana.
At an auction during the festival in February, a humidor of 400 Behikes raised €4.6mn, setting a new record for a humidor sale: €11,500 a cigar, showing once again the crazy prices people are willing to pay for cigars, and cementing the line’s status as the gold standard in luxury cigars.
Craig Robins, CEO of Design District co-owner Dacra, began accumulating buildings in the area in the late 1990s, transforming a patch of largely abandoned furniture showrooms that were "unrenovated and a dump," he said. Robins estimates that he paid around $15 million for about half of the Design District… Based on the district's roughly 1 million square feet, that suggests the entire property would have a valuation of around $4 billion.
How Bernard Arnault took a bankrupt textile company, but with a great brand, and turned it into a Luxury Powerhouse—and Became One of the World's Richest People!
Popular live TV streaming portal USTVGO appears to have shut down its service. A brief message on the site says "Sorry, we are closed," leaving millions of users with plenty of unanswered questions. While the reason for the sudden decision is unknown, rightsholders and anti-piracy outfits already had USTVGO on their radar.
A few days ago, USTVGO users were presented with a disappointing message.
Out of the blue, the site's clean homepage, which usually carries links to over a hundred channels including ABC, CBS, NBC, and Nickelodeon, was replaced with just four words; Sorry, we are closed.
Mystery Disappearances
When the message first appeared, some had hoped that the downtime would be temporary. But, as time passed, a short hiatus seemed more and more unlikely.
It's not just the main USTVGO.tv domain name that's affected either; many alternative points of access, including ustv247.tv and watchnewslive.tv, display the same "we are closed" message.
To discover more about the shutdown, TorrentFreak reached out to USTVGo's administrators. At the time of writing we're yet to receive a response. The site's email addresses no longer work since USTVGo's mail servers have disappeared. The platform's official Discord channel has also been shut down.
The above suggests that the people behind the site don't want to be reached. That leaves former users and the public with unanswered questions, which will undoubtedly lead to speculation.
On The Anti-Piracy Radar
A statement on USTVGO's website claimed that it was legal 'to watch' its streams. However, the site itself was clearly not seen as a legal streaming service, as the streams were (re)broadcasted without permission from rightsholders.
Despite its popularity, USTVGO never appeared on the U.S. Trade Representative's list of notorious pirate sites, but it was in the crosshairs of copyright holders and anti-piracy groups.
In recent months, the TV streaming website was targeted in DMCA notices sent by ESPN, Major League Baseball, and NBCUniversal, who all had their channels listed on the site.
Anti-piracy outfit Alianza, which represents major TV broadcasters including DirecTV, Discovery, Fox, HBO, and Sky, has also been on to the service for a while. In a 2021 report produced by Nagra, USTVGO was listed as one of the most popular TV streaming sites.
The screenshot above estimates that the service had roughly two million visitors in early 2021, but traffic continued to grow. More recently USTVGO reportedly enjoyed 16 million monthly visits, with almost three quarters coming from the US.
Pressure?
Without official word from the site's operators, we can only speculate about the reasons behind USTVGO's sudden closure. However, in cases like these, some type of legal pressure seems a likely option.
There is no evidence to suggest that a third party has taken control of USTVGO's domains, but perhaps the owners were approached with a cease-and-desist notice.
For the site's former users, whose favorite streaming portal has already gone, the cause of the closure is irrelevant. Some will likely flock to USTVGO alternatives such as 123tvnow, 123tv, tv247, and others.
THE SET LIST for the Police's first concert consisted of seven songs, and drummer Stewart Copeland estimates they got through all of them in about six minutes. "We were fast," he says. With the exception of "Landlord," which Sting cowrote, and a cover of the Animals' "It's My Life," Copeland tells Rolling Stone, the songs were "all my concoctions."
How Argentina's Favorite Song Became the World Cup's Soundtrack - The New York Times
Argentina's players sang with their fans after winning the semifinal game against Croatia on Tuesday.Richard Heathcote/Getty Images
How Argentina's Favorite Song Became the World Cup's Soundtrack
The song, Muchachos, Ahora Nos Volvimos A Ilusionar, has been a constant refrain in Qatar.
Lionel Messi apart, arguably nobody has played a more prominent role in Argentina's run to the World Cup final than a 62-year-old musician and a 30-year-old teacher, neither of whom is anywhere near Qatar. Between them, though, they created the song that has become the soundtrack to Argentina's games and an earworm contracted by anyone who has been in Doha over the last month, or watched any of the tournament on television.
The song, Muchachos, Ahora Nos Volvimos A Ilusionar, has been adopted as an unofficial anthem not only by Argentina's vast army of traveling fans — around 40,000 are expected to attend the final at Lusail today — but by the players themselves: Instagram videos of their dressing room celebrations after every victory have invariably featured a joyous rendition of the song.
Its popularity, doubtless, has something to do with the fact that its two verses hit all the major notes of Argentina's campaign: it is a homage not only to Messi but to Diego Maradona; it pays tribute to the Argentine soldiers who died during the Falklands War of 1982; it draws in the country's various disappointments in international tournaments in recent years; and it goes into its key change with a taunt directed at Argentina's major soccer rival, Brazil.
But it is also a familiar tune to most Argentine fans. Various Argentine club teams have their own bespoke versions of Muchachos, Esta Noche Me Emborracho, a 2003 hit for the rock band La Mosca Tsé tsé, led by the 62-year-old singer Guillermo Novellis. A (relatively) cursory attempt to trace its genealogy would suggest that fans of Boca Juniors were the first to adapt the melody for their own purposes, in this case mocking its fierce rival, River Plate. Within a couple of years, Racing Club, a team in Avellaneda, had an interpretation, quickly followed by its rival, Independiente. In the endless round of call and response that marks Argentine fan culture, both were dedicated to denigrating the other. The most famous iteration, though, probably belonged to River Plate.
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That it became something approaching a national anthem is down, largely, to a 30-year-old teacher named Fernando Romero. Together with a friend, he changed the lyrics once more in the days after Maradona's death last year, turning it into a tribute to the player widely regarded as either Argentina's first or second greatest. When the two friends were filmed singing it outside River's Monumental stadium, during a game against Bolivia, the footage quickly went viral. Messi became aware of it: he named it, soon after, his favorite soccer chant. So, too, did Novellis, who got in touch with Romero and volunteered to record and release a version with his lyrics in the buildup to the World Cup.
Even Novellis, though, is a little surprised by its success. La Mosca has a curiously fitting relationship with soccer. Maradona was such a fan that he invited the band to play his 40th birthday party in 2000. And seven years later, another devotee asked if they would do a turn at his 20th birthday party. Messi and Novellis have been in occasional contact ever since.
Now, the song has not only reverberated around Lusail, again and again, on Argentina's way to the final, it is currently number one on Spotify in Argentina. It has been streamed 4.4 million times in just a few weeks. (The original is currently at almost 14 million.) Novellis has been interviewed by media outlets across the world; a campaign was launched to fly Romero to Qatar, though he turned it down, suggesting the country had "more important things to address." The story, as Novellis told La Nacion, is "easy to explain, but difficult to understand."
Rory Smith is The Times's chief soccer correspondent, based in Britain. He covers all aspects of European soccer and has reported from three World Cups, the Olympics, and numerous European tournaments. @RorySmith
Nearly 20 years after its final flight, Concorde continues to capture the imagination of many aviation enthusiasts as the most remarkable airplane in history: a brilliant, beautiful marvel of innovation and ingenuity that became the darling of the world's jet-setting elite.
With the tagline "Arrive Before You Leave" for its ability to fly passengers westward across the Atlantic Ocean in about three hours, Concorde still holds the prestige of being the only commercial supersonic aircraft (though that status could soon be disrupted by several emerging players reviving the sector).
Even so, those lucky enough to have traveled on Concorde say the aircraft will always retain a rarified air not just for its engineering feats—flying more than twice the speed of sound and on the fringes of space, at 11 miles above the ground—but also for an unmatchable aura of thrill and luxury.
"The atmosphere in the cabin was one of an exclusive club, and it was because these were the people who controlled the world, controlled the world's finance and the world's trade,"
If you’ve ever sat at home, surrounded by mountainous piles of loose undocumented cash, and wondered when you’d next get the chance at an astoundingly rare and museum-level interesting watch from Rolex, then have I got an auction listing for you. Actually, two.
That’s right, over the course of the past couple of weeks, both Phillips and Christie’s have announced that their November auctions will feature something of a holy grail among Rolex collectors – Deep Sea Specials.
Investment Wine ranked 1st in luxury asset performance with 13% growth in year to June 30, 2021 in the Knight Frank Annual Wealth Report.
Wine is the most 'liquid' luxury investment: benefiting from well-established secondary market, with price transparency and efficient routes to market.
The average performance of the luxury assets in the period under review was 3% growth, as recorded by the Knight Frank Luxury Investment Index (KFLII). Investment wine achieved nearly five times this and returned considerably more than the next best performer, rare watches where value grew by an average 5%.
Fine wine is the most 'liquid' luxury investment, in that it benefits from a well-established secondary market, with price transparency and efficient routes to market. Valuations can be clearly explained due to role of Liv-ex and other platforms. Fine wine investment is not wholly reliant on auctions and private sales which can lead to price inflation in the 'heat of the moment'.
The safari vehicles are the work of Kenyan-Swedish startup Opibus, which offers electric conversion of popular off-road vehicles like the Toyota Land Cruiser and Land Rover Defender for game reserves.
These vehicles typically use diesel engines, which are loud and emit fumes that may irritate animals and scare them off before tourists can get a good view.
Since its establishment in 2017, Opibus has converted ten vehicles that are now used in Kenyan game reserves.
The company uses a standardised conversion system through which it replaces the combustion engine with an electric powertrain and lithium-ion battery, and removes the 5-speed gearbox.
The high and low-range 4-wheel drive and differential lock are retained, while a PMSM motor is attached to the transfer case.
It also fits the vehicle with a 7-inch infotainment system for monitoring range and other performance metrics.
Electric Land Cruisers at Emboo River camp in the Masaai Mara National Reserve.
The electric powertrain developed by Opibus specifically for off-road vehicles provides 120kW power with 600Nm motor torque.
It can reach speeds of up to 80km/h — more than enough for game drives.
Battery capacities are available in 38kWh or 58kWh, providing respective ranges of 90km or 140km on tar roads, or 65km and 100km off-road.
While this might seem like low numbers when compared to the likes of Tesla, it should be noted that a typical two or three-hour game drive rarely exceeds 100km.
The battery charges at 6.6kW, meaning a full charge takes between 5 to 7 hours.
Prices for converting an off-road vehicle start at $39,900 (R594,900), which also includes a 6.6kW AC charger.
In addition to running cleaner and quieter, Opibus claims conversion cuts the initial investment in an electric car in half and reduces the running cost associated with fuel-based vehicles over the long term.
"Without the dependency on fuel, our electric vehicles can either be charged by a solar system or directly from grid electricity, eliminating the need to transport fuel to your operation and reducing the cost per kilometre.
"The electric powertrain also needs far less servicing, lubrication or maintenance than a traditional combustion engine, ensuring uptime is maximised and cost kept to a minimum."
Opibus also develops solar-powered infrastructure and chargers that are deployed in camps to provide power that may be used to recharge the vehicles.
Although Opibus currently only offers its electric conversions in Kenya, it plans to increase its presence in Africa and worldwide over the next couple of years.
In response to a query from MyBroadband, an agent confirmed that South Africa was in its expansion plans.
However, there was currently no timeline for when this could happen.
The pre-order page states that it will be available in "Selected Countries" aside from Kenya from 2022.
Electric safari vehicles could be a boon to South Africa's wildlife tourism industry.
Many of the open-top safari vehicles used in the country's parks are modified Land Cruisers or Hilux bakkies, which also run on diesel or petrol.
Members of multiple forums of the country's biggest game reserve, the Kruger National Park, have complained about how the noise of cars that remain idling at sightings disrupts the game viewing experience.
The images below provide more details about the electric conversion system that Opibus uses for off-road vehicles.
Queen Marie-Antoinette’s Diamonds for Sale in Geneva
THE PROPERTY OF A EUROPEAN ROYAL FAMILY
Geneva - on 9 November 2021 Christie’s will proudly offer THE MARIE ANTOINETTE DIAMONDS as lot 1 of its live Magnificent Jewels Auction to be held at the Four Seasons Hotel des Bergues. Presented in their current form, the 112 diamonds, originally belonging to Queen Marie-Antoinette of France (1755-1793), are set as a historic pair of bracelets (estimated $2,000,000-4,000,000).
Some Full Moons are known under pretty romantic names, such as "Strawberry Moon" or "Pink Moon", but some of them are much more strange. The thing is, the names traditionally come from Native American, Colonial American, and European cultures. The July Full Moon's name is associated with male deer, whose antlers are in full growing phase this month. In English, male deer and some other male horned animals are called bucks — this is why each Full Moon in July is called the Buck Moon.
It still sounds better than the Worm Moon, though. To see how much you know about the Full Moons, their names (and colors!), take our quiz. The Full Buck Moon will occur on July 24, 2021; shortly afterward, our natural satellite will meet Jupiter and Saturn. Today we'll tell you more about these spectacular events.
July Full Moon alternative names
Besides the Buck Moon, there are other names for the July Full Moon among different cultures. Thus, some refer to it as the Thunder Moon due to the summer storm season. From Old English, it's also known as the Hay Moon after the July hay harvest.
The Hungry Ghost Moon is a traditional Chinese name. People in China believe that around this time, spirits of hungry ghosts roam the Earth.
Here are some examples of the July Full Moon names among various cultures and regions:
Native Americans: Buck Moon
Celts: Moon of Claiming
Cherokee: Ripe Corn Moon
Choctaw: Crane Moon
Colonial Americans: Summer Moon
Wiccan: Mead Moon
Neo-Paganism: Rose Moon
Southern Hemisphere: Wolf Moon, Old Moon, Ice Moon
July Full Moon: when to see in 2021?
In 2021, the Full Buck Moon will take place on July 24, at 02:36 GMT. From July 23 to 24, our natural satellite will be best visible for much of the night, rising after sunset and setting shortly before sunrise. However, the Moon will appear "full" for several nights in a row, especially to the naked eye.
To check the Moon's phase and its path across the sky, use Star Walk 2. Open the app, tap the menu icon in the lower right corner and select the Sky Live section. Swipe the picture of the Moon to see how it's changing the phase over time.
August Full Moon: When is the next Full Moon?
The next Full Moon will occur on August 22, 2021. Most likely, you'll hear about this event under the name of the "Blue Moon". In short, Blue Moon is the second Full Moon in one calendar month or the third of four Full Moons in one season. The second case happens very rarely, and it's exactly the one that will occur in August 2021. We'll reveal more details closer to the date.
Moon and Gas Giants
These days, look for bright planets shining close to our natural satellite. Saturn will meet the Moon first — on July 24, at 16:38 GMT, both celestial objects will share the same right ascension. The Moon will be passing 3°48' to the south of the ringed planet at the closest approach. The Moon and Saturn will shine at a magnitude of -12.7 and 0.2, respectively; look for them in the constellation Capricornus.
Almost two days later, on July 26, at 01:21 GMT, the 96% illuminated Moon will pass 4°10' to the south of Jupiter that will have a magnitude of -2.8. You'll find the Moon and Jupiter in the constellation Aquarius.
Wishing you clear skies and happy observations!
The easiest way to find out when conjunctions are best visible in your location is to use Star Walk 2. Open the app, type the name of an object in the search field, choose a corresponding result. Then activate the Time Machine by long touching the clock icon in the upper right corner of your screen. Choose any time and date and see an object's position in the sky.
A few days ago, USTVGO users were presented with a disappointing message. 
