Jared Leto's Joker kisses Margot Robbie then hits her in new on-set Suicide Squad pictures

By STEFAN KYRIAZIS
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FIRST LOOK at Jared Leto in action as The Joker in David Ayer's Suicide Squad as he shoots a scene kissing and fighting with Margot Robbie, aka Harley Quinn.

After weeks of teasers and instagram posts, we finally get to see Jared Leto unleashed as The Joker.

Dressed in a shiny burgundy suit and sporting vivid green hair, a white face and blacked-out eyes with the character's distictive red-slashed mouth, the actor looks every bit the maniac supervillain.

The latest pictures show the Oscar-winner shooting a scene with his beautiful Aussie co-star, Margot Robbie. Robbie plays Dr Harleen Quinzel who will later change her name (slightly) and become the wicked Harley Quinn. The pictures appear to show a flash-back of an early encounter between the two characters.

In the scene, The Joker roars up in a red sports car with the number plates 'HAHAHA' and pulls Robbie’s fresh-faced character in for a kiss. In the comic book canon, Quinzel’s obsession with The Joker fuels her transformation into the vampish Quinn.

There are already clear foreshadowings of the troubles ahead when a trucker pulls out a crowbar and Quinzel shoots him before turning the gun on The Joker. In the ensuing fight, The Joker strikes her and sends her flying to the ground.

Suicide Squad also stars Will Smith as Deadshot and Cara Delevingne as Enchantress. Director David Ayer’s film features a motley crew of famous comic book villains who perform secret missions for the US government in return for shortened prison time.

 Suicide Squad will be released on August 5, 2016.  

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Lilly Pulitzer for Target Causes Shopping Frenzy

By Emanuella Grinberg, CNN.
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(CNN)Floral pastel dresses and beach coverups flew off the racks at Target stores Sunday morning as eager shoppers snatched up pieces from the retailer's limited edition Lilly Pulitzer collection.

The highly anticipated 250-item collection featured Lilly Pulitzer's bold and bright designs at discounted prices. The Target version of Lilly Pulitzer's signature sleeveless, collarless dress was available for $38, while Lilly Pulitzer dresses generally go for around $180 at other stores.

Target's Lilly Pulitzer bikinis are priced at $48 for the top and bottom, compared to $136 for the two pieces. Lines started forming as early as 5 a.m. outside Target stores across the country for the colorful collection, which went on sale Sunday.

 Pictures on social media showed lines extending into parking lots. Other images showed racks completely emptied of inventory within minutes of doors opening. The situation was not much better for online shoppers, who started visiting the site at midnight to try to snag a piece from the 250-item collection.

Many found the site was down; others complained of being unable to add items to their carts or that by the time they made it to checkout, the items were no longer unavailable Target issued periodic updates and apologies on Twitter throughout Sunday morning.

The last update from Target, around 7 a.m. ET, thanked shoppers for their patience and said the site was up and running. By then, shoppers complained that nearly everything was sold out. Target often teams up with high-end designers to create limited edition fashion lines.

The collections, from designers such as Alexander McQueen, Prabal Gurung (a favorite of Kate, the Duchess of Cambridge), and Jason Wu (who designed one of Michelle Obama's inaugural gowns), tend to create lots of buzz and sell out within hours.

CNN's Katie Lobosco contributed to this report.
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Red Sox

NEW YORK (AP) — This was no ordinary defeat. Not after 7 hours of back-and-forth baseball against your biggest rival.

In the latest classic matchup of their long and illustrious history, the Boston Red Sox finally outlasted the New York Yankees 6-5 in 19 innings early Saturday when the game-ending double play was turned at 2:13 a.m.

"It feels worse than one loss, but thank goodness it's only one," Brett Gardner said.

Chase Headley and Mark Teixeira, who turned 35 when the clock struck midnight, hit tying home runs for the Yankees during an early-season epic delayed 16 minutes by a power outage in the 12th. That's why the official time of game was 6 hours, 49 minutes — even though it took more than 7 hours to complete.

After squandering leads in the ninth, 16th and 18th, Boston at last went ahead for good on a sacrifice fly by Mookie Betts. Xander Bogaerts scored the decisive run after reaching on his fourth hit in extra innings.

The teams get little chance to rest following the first of 19 meetings this year. They're back at it for the middle game of the series Saturday at 1:05 p.m.

"It's one game that seemed like about six, and we'll move on," Yankees manager Joe Girardi said.

David Ortiz hit a solo homer for Boston to break a 3-all deadlock in the 16th. But then Teixeira, batting from the right side against right-handed knuckleballer Steven Wright, led off the bottom half with a no-doubt drive to left field.

And on it went before a few thousand scattered fans left from the crowd of 41,292.

Pablo Sandoval put the Red Sox back in front with an RBI single in the 18th only to see Brian McCann and Carlos Beltran hit doubles in the bottom half to tie it again at 5.

Each club went to its last reliever in the 15th during the longest game by time in Red Sox history — and second-longest for the Yankees. They had a 22-inning victory at Detroit that took 7 hours in 1962.

It was the longest game by innings for New York since a 19-inning win over Minnesota in August 1976.

"It was just a wonderful game. I wish we would have won, but it was a great game," Headley said.

The longest game by innings between the old rivals was a 20-inning victory for Boston in the second game of a 1967 doubleheader.

Headley's solo shot off fill-in closer Edward Mujica came with two outs in the bottom of the ninth. Neither team could break through again until Ortiz launched an 0-2 pitch from Esmil Rogers (0-1) to right-center.

Didi Gregorius had a chance to win it for New York in the 16th and 18th, but grounded out with a runner at third to end both innings.

Boston got five innings of relief from Wright (1-0) in a game that featured 17 pitchers who combined to throw 628 pitches.

The Red Sox stranded 20 runners, but came through one last time in the 19th.

Bogaerts singled, stole second and went to third on a passed ball by backup catcher John Ryan Murphy, who had just replaced McCann. Betts delivered a sac fly to center.

It appeared New York might rally yet again in the bottom half when Jacoby Ellsbury led off with a single. Gardner flied out, and Garrett Jones hit a low liner toward the middle. Bogaerts short-hopped the ball at shortstop and flipped to second, where Dustin Pedroia leaped in the air for an athletic relay to first.

"That's a heck of a play, to be able to pull that off at 2:30 in the morning," Wright said.

Girardi said Jones, a first baseman and DH who came off the bench in the 11th for his Yankees debut, would have pitched the 20th.

Rogers, who threw 81 pitches after making 35 the previous night, said he would have pushed to stay in the game.

The lights dimmed as Boston reliever Tommy Layne threw the first pitch in the bottom of the 12th to Beltran. Fans groaned and umpires huddled with both managers before going underneath the stands to get information.

It appeared nine or 10 banks of lights went out, many of them behind home plate. After both teams left the field to boos, the lights came back on and play resumed.

The Yankees said they believe there was a power surge throughout the building. The team turned on additional light banks that are normally off above the foul poles as electricians rebooted the bulbs that went dark.

One of several newcomers to the rivalry, Sandoval also had an RBI single for the Red Sox his first time up. And for the first time in two decades, Derek Jeter wasn't a member of the Yankees when they took on Boston.

"The game doesn't wait for anyone," Red Sox manager John Farrell said beforehand. "We're looking forward to the next chapter."

SEEN THAT BEFORE

It was Ortiz's first home run of the year and 50th against the Yankees, including playoff games.

BACK IN THE SADDLE

Alex Rodriguez batted third for New York. He hit an RBI single and a double, and struck out three times.

TRAINER'S ROOM

Yankees: McCann was shaken up in the ninth when a foul ball hit the top of his right kneecap, but he remained in the game for another nine innings.

UP NEXT

Red Sox: RHP Joe Kelly (strained biceps) will come off the DL to start Saturday afternoon.

Yankees: RHP Adam Warren, primarily a reliever the last two seasons, is scheduled to make his fourth major league start after winning the final rotation spot during spring training.

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International Women's Day 2015

In 2015, International Women’s Day, celebrated globally on 8 March, will highlight the Beijing Declaration and Platform for Action, a historic roadmap signed by 189 governments 20 years ago that sets the agenda for realizing women’s rights. While there have been many achievements since then, many serious gaps remain.

This is the time to uphold women’s achievements, recognize challenges, and focus greater attention on women’s rights and gender equality to mobilize all people to do their part. The Beijing Platform for Action focuses on 12 critical areas of concern, and envisions a world where each woman and girl can exercise her choices, such as participating in politics, getting an education, having an income, and living in societies free from violence and discrimination.

To this end, the theme of this year’s International Women’s Day is the clarion call of UN Women’s Beijing+20 campaign “Empowering Women, Empowering Humanity: Picture it!” Join governments and activists across the world in commemorating the ground-breaking Conference of 1995. We celebrate the many achievements that have come since then and galvanize action to address the gaps that still remain in making gender equality a reality.

- See more at: http://www.unwomen.org/en/news/in-focus/international-womens-day#sthash.iyib7vXJ.dpuf

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Samsung Galaxy S6: Cool Curves, Lightning-Fast Camera

All the leaks had pointed to a unique phone with a curved screen on both sides of the device, and that’s exactly what Samsung delivered on Sunday when it launched the new Galaxy S6 smartphone and its curvier cousin, the Galaxy S6 Edge.

Samsung has a lot riding on this latest pair of devices, which hit shelves on April 10.

It needs to revive flagging sales in the midst of greater competition than ever from Apple and Chinese smartphone makers on the low-cost end like Xiaomi and Huawei. The curved screen puts Samsung on the cutting edge of new form factors, but the obligatory upgrade in specs is also impressive, including faster processing speeds, quicker battery charging and a super-fast, high-resolution camera.

Ultimately the question is whether that will all be enough to attract consumers in the midst of some other potentially negative tradeoffs. Primarily: Samsung Galaxy fans love the fact that its phones allow you to pop out the battery and also insert a microSD card.

Yet the S6 got rid of both these features.

Samsung executives actually addressed this on stage at Sunday’s launch event, arguing that the battery life of the S6 was so good now, that owners wouldn’t even have to worry about replacing it. Still, the u-turn might drive some Samsung faithful away.

The battery for both phones lasts for up to 12 hours on Wi-Fi and charges “faster than any other smartphone in the industry,” Samsung CEO JK Shin said. It takes 10 minutes to charge the S6 to get four hours of battery life, he claimed. To get to 100%, it takes the S6 roughly half the time of the iPhone 6 to charge.

Now for those curves. It’s unclear at this point if Samsung is releasing an API that will allow third-party developers to create apps that utilize the curved sides of the screen, but bear in the mind that the curves themselves are subtle.

They don’t play that same second-screen role as that of the Galaxy Note Edge. They’re more gentle slopes than clearly-defined, rounded edges.

Yet they can still come in handy with a couple of features that Samsung has pre-installed on the Edge. There’s a feature called Quick Contacts, that allows you to swipe in a column for contacts shaded in various colors on the curved side of the screen.

In addition, when the phone is lying flat on its screen, the color of that contact will glow when they call, so you can know who it is without having to pick up the phone.

Fundamentally though, the curves still seem like more of a statement piece than a practical use case. One of Samsung’s executives practically admitted this on stage: “It’s a more comfortable grip, amazing user experience and above all, your friends will think it’s very cool!” said Young Hee Lee, executive vice president for marketing at Samsung.

Cool begets novel, which potentially begets the-dreaded “gimmick.” If consumers start seeing the curved novelty as more of a gimmick than useful feature that could be a big problem for sales of the S6 Edge.

Analysts I spoke to after the launch event were dubious about whether the Edge had enough of a wow-factor to give Samsung a much needed bump in smartphone sales.

Not helping matters: HTC will be preempting Samsung by shipping its own latest smartphone ahead of the Edge. Typically Samsung new phones ship before HTC, but this time around HTC has said its new M9 smartphone would be released on March 31, a week and a half before the S6 and S6 Edge.

Hands on, the Edge does indeed have a comfortable grip, though the tapered sides may take some getting used to for those who’ve carried rounded or square-edged phone for the last few years.

One of the real standout features though is the camera. At its launch event, Samsung showed low-light photos taken by the iPhone 6 Plus and the Galaxy S6 side by side on the large screen.

The latter won out hands down both for photos and video. In one demo a video showing a couple sitting in front of a fountain at night almost looked like silhouettes on the iPhone 6 video, but they were clearly illuminated in the Galaxy S6 version.

The camera benefits from a 16-megapixel sensor and an F1.9 lens that’s also very quick to load. Just tap the home button twice and it launches almost immediately — in 0.7 seconds, according to Samsung.

The screen’s resolution is also super crisp, packing in an incredible 577 pixels per inch on the phone’s AMOLED screen.

All told the Edge is an impressive effort by Samsung and the curved screen shows a bold attempt to redefine the way smartphones are designed and used.

Still, there’s a sense that Samsung could have taken this a bit further, and given Edge an even more dramatic curvature like the Note Edge to open the door to new kinds of applications, taking it safely beyond the role of novelty.

The built-in battery and lack of a microSD card may also be a tough pill for Samsung fans to swallow. All the more reason to fear the company’s best years of smartphone sales may well be behind it.

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Original post by: Parmy OlsonForbes Staff

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