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NEW YORK — Jim Henson, the relentless innovator who gave the world Kermit the Frog and “The Muppet Show”, is getting a permanent tribute in New York, nearly 30 years after his death.

If rarely seen on camera, Henson lived and breathed television, hooking adult Americans on puppets, turning puppetry into prime-time entertainment and for 25 years gave life to Kermit, the world’s most famous puppet.

Not only did he create “The Muppet Show” and several of Kermit’s contemporaries, he gave birth to Elmo, Big Bird, Bert and Ernie of “Sesame Street” fame, “Fraggle Rock” and movies “Dark Crystal” (1982) and “Labyrinth” (1986).

On Saturday, the Museum of the Moving Image in Queens opens a permanent exhibition exploring Henson’s work, challenging visitors to look beyond his most famous creations at the astonishingly breadth of his career.

The exhibition brings together more than 300 objects, among them a Kermit the Frog, and more than 180 items bequeathed to the museum by the Henson family.

When Henson came to see puppetry as a serious art form, inspired partly by a trip to Europe in 1958, puppets at that time in America were for children, said Barbara Miller, curator of “The Jim Henson Exhibition”.

“The work and the projects that he developed — they were always fighting against this notion that puppets are just for kids,” she said.

“’The Muppet Show’ was obviously the most successful way that he broke that barrier. It was programmed as prime time on Sunday nights. It was family hour so it was everybody.”

Merging comedy, fantasy, poetry, music and song, it was a surprising blend of weekly US television show which ran from 1976 to 1981, defined a generation and inspired eight feature-length films from 1979 to 2014.

‘Innovate’

But unusually, Henson walked away when the show was still in its prime, although he continued to give voice and movement to Kermit until his sudden death from pneumonia aged 53 in 1990.

“He was worried he was going to start repeating himself. The last thing my dad would want is that Kermit just keeps doing the same thing,” son Brian explained in a recent interview with The Hollywood Reporter.

“My dad’s number one thing was don’t repeat yourself. Innovate. Do something new.”

Henson demonstrated that innovation time and again with short, Oscar-nominated 1965 surrealist film “Time Piece”, then with “Dark Crystal”, “Fraggle Rock” and “Labyrinth” starring Davie Bowie.

Each time, he created a new universe made possible by advances in technology.

The purpose of the exhibition is not only to showcase his work but to illustrate “how things happened and what the creative processes were”, Miller said.

“I wanted people coming in with an idea of who Jim Henson is and leaving with a more complex idea of who he is and maybe more questions than they had when they came in,” she explained.

A travelling version of the exhibition is on view at the Museum of Pop Culture in Seattle and will travel the United States and the world over the next five years.

“We know ‘The Muppets,’ we know the characters on ‘Sesame Street,’ maybe a couple of other things — but one of the goals is to really deepen our understanding of Jim Henson as an artist, as a creative thinker, as an experimental filmmaker,” said Miller. 

“And really see a bigger picture of him as a creator.”

The weight that Americans typically gain between ages 20 and 50 may raise their risk of developing cancer, heart disease and other major illnesses, according to a new study. 

Even those who only gained 5 kilos faced a higher risk of major chronic diseases and aging poorly, the study authors report in JAMA. 

“In the past, most focus has been put on people who are already obese and how they should lose weight. The problem is that people don’t become obese overnight,” said senior study author Dr Frank Hu of the Harvard T.H Chan School of Public Health in Boston. 

“Americans start to gain weight in early adulthood and put on a small amount each year, such as 0.2kg or 0.5kg, which adds up in the long-term,” Hu told Reuters Health in a phone interview. “Then it’s difficult to lose weight and maintain that lost weight. That’s why prevention is extremely important.” 

The researchers analysed data from two large studies that followed nearly 93,000 US women and more than 25,000 US men over decades. Participants reported what their weights had been in young adulthood — at age 18 for women and age 21 for men — and again at age 55. 

The study team then tracked health changes after age 55, including the development of various diseases, cognitive decline and physical limitations associated with aging. 

Women gained an average of 14 kilos over 37 years, and men put on an average 11 kilos over 34 years. Consistently across both genders, those who gained more weight were more likely to be physically inactive, non-smokers, have unhealthy diets and have more chronic diseases by the time they were in their 50s. 

About one in five women and one in three men were considered to be aging healthily in their 70s. 

Compared to people who stayed close to their youthful weight, those who gained just 2.5kg to 10kg had nearly double the risk of type 2 diabetes, as well as 38 per cent higher risk of gallstones and 9 per cent to 25 per cent increased risk for hypertension, heart disease and cancer. 

People who gained 10kg to 20kg had a quadrupled risk of developing type 2 diabetes, doubled risk of developing gallstones and 30 per cent to 60 per cent increased risk of hypertension, heart disease and an obesity-related cancer. 

Gaining more than 20kg was tied to 10 times the odds of hypertension, three times the odds of gallstones and twice the heart disease risk of people who had stayed at the same weight. 

“The overall results were not surprising because we know that excess weight gain is associated with many consequences, but the moderate weight gain statistics were sobering,” Hu said. “Most people gain more than 10 kilos, so this is a wake-up call for people.” 

Each 5-kilo increase in weight gain was associated with 17 per cent reduction in the odds of aging healthily. 

“The good news about the obesity battle is that we’re seeing plateaus and decreases in children, but the bad news is we’re still seeing increases in adulthood,” said Dr William Dietz of George Washington University in Washington, DC, who wrote a commentary accompanying the study. 

Dietz suggested turning toward workplaces to implement healthy living strategies and cut down on daytime snacking. Since most Americans spend their daytime hours at a workplace and since many workplaces bear the healthcare costs associated with absenteeism and lost productivity, corporations could make a big impact, he said. Targeting families could be another effective avenue, too, he added. 

“The bottom line is that weight gain during adulthood is not benign,” Dietz said. “With all of these adverse health consequences, we need to find ways to help adults prevent weight gain.” 

We all know that cheetahs, which can run up to 120kph, are the fastest land animal on Earth, but why is this? Why could not elephants, for example, run faster?

Scientists now think it is because the muscle cells in big animals run out of fuel before they can reach their theoretical maximum speed, Science magazine said.

A new study released on Monday charts the speed limits of hundreds of animals, ranging from tiny fruit flies to gigantic blue whales. They found that medium-size animals (whether on land, in air or sea) are generally the fastest.

While it is not surprising that little animals aren’t that fast, why are not big ones? “By the time large animals get up to higher speeds while sprinting, their rapidly available energy reserves also soon run out,” study leader Myriam Hirt of the German Centre for Integrative Biodiversity Research told Live Science.

Just as cheetahs are fastest on land, medium-sized marlins are fastest in the sea and medium-size falcons are fastest in the air, researchers found.

“A beetle is slower than a mouse, which is slower than a rabbit, which is slower than a cheetah — which is faster than an elephant,” said the study, which was published in the peer-reviewed journal Nature Ecology and Evolution.

“The exciting part of this proposal is that it applies equally well to animals on land, in the air and in water,” according to a “News and Views” article that accompanied the study.

Many explanations have been proposed for why the largest animals are slower than smaller species, ranging from morphological constraints to the ability of bones and muscles to withstand the forces experienced during locomotion, the accompanying article said. “Yet, none of these explanations, however neat and tidy they may be, apply equally to all animals.”

The new study attempts to rectify that.

The study also estimated the running speeds of long-extinct animals such as dinosaurs. For example, the Tyrannosaurus Rex likely had a top speed of 27kph.

That’s 1.6kph faster than the top speed of an average human today, and 17.7kph slower than Usain Bolt, the world’s fastest man. So we may have had a fighting chance against the infamous terrible lizards.

“In the future, our model will enable us to estimate, in a very simple way, how fast other extinct animals were able to run,” Hirt said.

WASHINGTON — The first child in the world to undergo a double hand transplant is now able to write, feed and dress himself, doctors said Tuesday, declaring the ground-breaking operation a success after 18 months.

The report in The Lancet Child & Adolescent Health provides the first official medical update on 10-year-old Zion Harvey, who underwent surgery to replace both hands in July 2015.

“Eighteen months after the surgery, the child is more independent and able to complete day-to-day activities,” said Sandra Amaral, a doctor at Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia, where the operation took place. 

“He continues to improve as he undergoes daily therapy to increase his hand function, and psychosocial support to help deal with the ongoing demands of his surgery.”

Harvey had his hands and feet amputated at the age of two, following a sepsis infection. He also had a kidney transplant.

Harvey was already receiving drugs to suppress any immune reaction to his kidney, which was a key factor in his selection for the 10-plus hour hand transplant surgery.

Immunosuppressive drugs must be taken continuously to prevent a patient’s body from rejecting the transplant. These drugs carry risks, including diabetes, cancer and infections.

Doctors reviewed both the successes and challenges Harvey and his family have faced, noting that a large team of specialists was hard at work supporting them through all the ups and downs.

The child has “undergone eight rejections of the hands, including serious episodes during the fourth and seventh months of his transplant,” said the report.

“All of these were reversed with immunosuppression drugs without impacting the function of the child’s hands.”

Harvey continues to take four immunosuppression drugs and a steroid.

“While functional outcomes are positive and the boy is benefitting from his transplant, this surgery has been very demanding for this child and his family,” said Amaral.

Post-surgery progress

Before the double hand transplant, Harvey had “limited ability to dress, feed and wash himself through adapted processes, using his residual limbs or specialist equipment,” said the report.

His mother hoped he would one day be able to dress himself, brush his teeth, and cut up his own food.

Harvey, for his part, wanted to climb monkey bars and grip a baseball bat.

The donor hands became available in July 2015 from a deceased child.

Within days of the surgery, Harvey discovered he could move his fingers, using the ligaments from his residual limbs.

“Regrowth of the nerves meant that he could move the transplanted hand muscles and feel touch within around six months, when he also became able to feed himself and grasp a pen to write,” said the report.

Eight months after the operation, Harvey was using scissors and drawing with crayons. 

Within a year, he could swing a baseball bat using both hands. 

He also threw out the first pitch at a Baltimore Orioles game last August.

Regular meetings with a psychologist and a social worker were part of the recovery process, aimed at helping him cope with his new hands.

Scans have shown his brain is adapting to the new hands, developing new pathways to control movement and feel sensations.

Researchers cautioned that more study is needed before hand transplants in children become widespread.

“The world’s first double hand transplant in a child has been successful under carefully considered circumstances,” said the report.

The first successful hand transplant in an adult was completed in 1998.

LOS ANGELES — Long before he was the auteur behind some of the most spectacular, extravagant action movies ever made, Luc Besson was a young boy in love with a comic book character.

He first encountered Laureline, the heroine played by Cara Delevingne in his forthcoming sci-fi spectacular “Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets”, when he was 10 and living some 40 kilometres from Paris.

Bored by the tedium of the bucolic life, he would look forward to pilgrimages to his local store, where in 1969 he happened upon the “Valerian and Laureline” comic strip in a publication called “Pilote”.

“It was at the time when there was no internet, one TV channel in black and white, and my stepfather didn’t have music at home. So life was pretty cold,” the French filmmaker, 58, told AFP. 

“There wasn’t much going on, not much possibility to escape, and then suddenly... I remember the first few pages in ‘Pilote’. It was a comic book and suddenly you have a couple travelling in space and time and fighting aliens.”

One of the first things he noticed, he told AFP in a recent interview in a Beverly Hills hotel, was an independence of spirit in Laureline that he had not encountered before.

“She was free, she was kicking ass, killing aliens. The first image of this woman was very strong and I was in love right away with her. She was so sexy,” he recalled. 

‘High octane’

It was an image of femininity which was to stay with Besson, informing countless movies in which he featured lethal female protagonists — sisters doing it for themselves, who didn’t need men to show them how to hold a gun.

Besson started out in the 1980s with French-language action movies influenced by Hollywood before international success came with “The Big Blue”, then “Nikita”, about a female assassin, and “Leon: The Professional”, about a young girl who becomes the protegee of a contract killer. 

Since those days, he has directed a string of movies that have earned mixed reviews, but he has been making big bucks with his motion picture house EuropaCorp as producer of high-octane series “The Transporter” and “Taken”. 

If Laureline was his first love, the father-of-five did not let the grass grow beneath his feet, going on to marry four times, including a brief union with Milla Jovovich, his star in dystopian cult classic “The Fifth Element” (1997). 

Besson has developed a knack over the years for uncovering female talent, whether introducing Jovovich or extracting Natalie Portman’s breathtaking debut performance in “Leon” (1994) when she was just 13.

“In the 1970s and 80s, the movies were totally on the men’s side and it’s not fair... The girl is in the back crying, ‘When are you coming back?’” Besson told a news conference for “Valerian” before his interview with AFP.

“That’s not my vision of the relationship between men and women. Maybe I was raised a certain way that I was lucky enough to see that they are both very strong.” 

Besson was known early in his career as a pioneer of the French “cinema du look”, which was said to favour style over narrative, but to claim that he doesn’t care about substance would be to sell him short.

‘They cheat millions’

While at heart an effects-laden action movie set in outer space, “Valerian” explores weighty but earthly concerns like climate change, diversity and the difficulties of life as an immigrant.

It was filmed in Paris last year against a background of political change in Europe and the United States, with the centre increasingly at threat from populists on the fringes.

Besson is reluctant to talk about domestic politics, but is happy to describe “Valerian” as an allegory for the overweening power of Big Business.

The bad guys in his movie, he contends, could just as easily be real-life executives from scandal-hit Volkswagen, which admitted in 2015 that some 11 million of its diesel cars were fitted with “defeat devices” used to cheat on emissions tests. 

“These big, huge companies like Volkswagen — they cheat millions of people by saying ‘Our cars are clean’. They cheat, and they go away and they don’t want to pay,” he bristled.

But while Besson wants his films to have gravitas — to avoid just being “like a cheeseburger” — he warns against filmmakers being too po-faced about their art.

“I love to talk about all these things — about ecology, immigration — with a little smile and having fun at the same time,” he says. 

“Because I think at the end of the day, you watch the film and you say, ‘We had fun, it was incredible’ — but something is left.”

“Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets” hits theaters in the US on July 21 and in France five days later.

LOS ANGELES — “War for the Planet of the Apes” is officially the box office champ, during a weekend that demands a close look.

Fox and Chernin Entertainment’s latest “Apes” movie is coming in on the low end of expectations with $56.3 million from 4,022 locations. It was pegged at $60 million - $65 million earlier in the week, but is ending up about the same as 2011’s “Rise of the Planet of the Apes”, which kicked off the modern trilogy with $54.8 million during its opening weekend. 2014’s “Dawn of the Planet of the Apes” was a bigger hit with a $72.6 million domestic opening, when it hit theatres against the third weekend of “Transformers: Age of Extinction”.

One way “War for the Planet of the Apes” stands out from other big-budget studio films is its rave reviews — it currently has a 94 per cent on Rotten Tomatoes. The film, which depicts the titular war between apes and humans, is directed by Matt Reeves, who joined the franchise when he stepped in on “Dawn”. Much has been made of the noticeable updates in technology that have gone into bring Andy Serkis’ character Caesar, the lead ape, to life. Woody Harrelson, in human form, joins the franchise as the villain, while Steve Zahn, as a chimp, offers comic relief.

“First and foremost the movie came in right where we expected it to,” said Fox’s distribution chief Chris Aronson, who pointed to a potentially “soft” next few weeks that could give “Apes” a long runway. “We’re going to play for quite some time,” he said.

“Spider Man: Homecoming”, meanwhile, is landing in second with about $44.2 million. That is a 61 per cent drop from last weekend’s heroic opening, which is probably a steeper falloff than Sony would have liked to see. That said, the movie’s total domestic gross in two weekends — $208.3 million — is already higher than the entire run of “The Amazing Spider-Man 2”. “Homecoming” is a hit with critics and audiences (93 per cent on Rotten Tomatoes; A CinemaScore), and dominated social media chatter for weeks leading up to its release. Tom Holland is the teen in the red suit, who first joined the Marvel universe in “Captain America: Civil War”.

The weekend’s other major release apart from “Apes” is the horror flick “Wish Upon” from Broad Green Pictures and Orion Pictures. The movie is entering the box office with a whisper, about $5.6 million from 2,250 locations. The fright-fest is directed by John R. Leonetti based on a script by Barbara Marshall. Its primarily young cast, led by Joey King, includes two Netflix alums in “Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt’s” Ki Hong Lee (aka Dong), and “Stranger Things’” beloved Barb, Shannon Purser. The movie was largely panned by critics, with a 20 per cent on Rotten Tomatoes, and it also carries a lacklustre audience appeal with a C CinemaScore.

Universal’s “Despicable Me 3” is showing in third place for the weekend, expecting to earn an additional $19.4 million from 4,155 locations. And Sony’s “Baby Driver” stays in the conversation with a strong 32 per cent hold that should land it in fourth. Edgar Wright’s latest is racing to $8.7 million from 3,043 locations. Rounding out the top five is the indie darling “The Big Sick” from comedian Kumail Nanjiani. The movie expanded to wide release (2,597 spots) during its fourth weekend in theatres, and should earn $7.5 million.

“It’s amazing that this independent film has found its footing as a family movie among all the summer blockbusters,” said Amazon Studios’ marketing and distribution chief Bob Berney in a statement. “The comedy and universal themes are connecting with audiences across the country.”

Finally, keep an eye on “Wonder Woman”, which is finishing in sixth this weekend with $6.7 million, and closing in on several benchmarks. By Monday, it is expected to cross $381 million domestically, which would put it past “Harry Potter and The Deathly Hollows Part 2” to become the third highest Warner Bros. movie ever. It is also only a few million shy of passing “Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2”, which with $386.2 million is currently the highest grossing movie of the summer so far. “Wonder Woman” has already blown past the domestic totals of fellow DC Comics movies “Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice” and “Suicide Squad”.

Coffee drinkers live longer, according to two large-scale studies released on Monday that add to extensive research indicating coffee consumption is associated with better health.

The studies examined the health histories of hundreds of thousands of people who were tracked over many years. They found that coffee-drinking reduced the risk of various diseases among people from several ethnicities, and this effect was seen in drinkers of regular or decaffeinated coffee. And the more coffee consumed, the greater the benefit.

These are observational studies, not controlled clinical trials. So while they demonstrate an association, they don’t prove cause and effect. But at the least, researchers said the latest evidence reinforces a large body of previous reports indicating there’s no harm from coffee — and that it might very well benefit people’s health.

Both of the new studies were published in the Annals of Internal Medicine. They asked participants about whether they drank coffee, and if so, how much. Participants were also asked about habits that influence health, such as smoking, exercise and heart disease.

One study was led by Veronica W. Setiawan of the University of Southern California. Funded by the National Cancer Institute, it examined coffee-drinking habits among more than 180,000 whites, African-Americans, Latinos, Japanese-Americans and native Hawaiians. They were followed for an average of 16 years.

The other was performed by European scientists from Imperial College London and the International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC), led by Marc J. Gunter of the IARC. It examined coffee-drinking among more than 520,000 adults from 10 European countries.

The study led by Setiawan found those drinking one cup of coffee daily had a 12 per cent lower risk of death from heart disease, cancer, stroke, diabetes, respiratory and kidney disease. For those drinking 3 cups a day, the risk reduction rose to 18 per cent.

In previous studies, the great majority of those examined were white, meaning that environmental and lifestyle differences among ethnicities could have confounded the results. But her study found these benefits to occur regardless of the ethnicity studied.

The study led by Gunter likewise found a lower death risk from various ailments, including digestive, circulatory and liver disease. The relationship was the same regardless of country, the study found. It was funded by the European Commission Directorate-General for Health and Consumers and IARC

The studies make a significant contribution to knowledge about coffee and health, said Peter Adams, professor of the Tumour Initiation and Maintenance Programme at Sanford Burnham Prebys Medical Discovery Institute.

“It’s good to know that not everything that gives you a buz is bad for you,” Adams said by e-mail.

“These two publications extend the findings of previous studies indicating the apparent benefits of coffee drinking,” he added. “While the data across these and previous investigations seems consistent and compelling, to be really convincing it is important to figure out how it works.

“As the authors note, coffee is a complex concoction, and caffeine itself does not seem to be responsible. Coffee does contain many other candidate molecules, for example anti-oxidants.”

“However, recent studies have challenged the view that anti-oxidants are always beneficial. Oxidants may not cause aging as previously thought, and anti-oxidants can even help cancer cells to survive!”

“So until we figure out how it works, you can keep drinking coffee and stay off the expensive anti-oxidants from the pharmacy,” he said.

Coffee is most renowned for its stimulant effect, provided by caffeine. However, individuals respond differently based on their genetics. Some people are metabolically fast at breaking down caffeine, others metabolise it more slowly.

This has health consequences. One of the few studies that showed some harm in coffee found that slow metabolisers who drank four or more cups of regular coffee a day experience a 36 per cent greater risk of nonfatal heart attacks.

However, fast metabolisers who drank that much coffee had a lower risk of heart attacks. The presumptive explanation is that the noncaffeine components of coffee exert beneficial effects, and fast metabolisers clear caffeine quickly enough to avoid harm from an excessive dose.

MUMBAI — A plus-sized Indian woman is challenging body stereotypes and defying Internet trolls with a series of yoga videos that are proving a hit on social media.

Dolly Singh, 34, has gained something of a fan following online for promoting body positivity by showing that size is no barrier to mastering complex yoga moves.

“To say ‘You can’t do this because you have so much weight,’ I don’t believe that,” Singh tells AFP after completing her morning stretch in a Mumbai park.

Four years ago a doctor advised her to lose weight following an ankle sprain. Singh, who is 150cm tall, weighed almost 90 kilogrammes at the time.

She got a trainer and embraced the “whole frenzy of losing weight” but grew bored of running so she signed up for something she had never done before — yoga.

“The first class I was thinking ‘Can I really do this because I have a big body?’ After two or three class I realised people were looking at me and thinking ‘Oh my god she can do this’. My body had a certain kind of stamina, of flexibility.”

Singh, who works for a TV channel in India’s financial capital, soon realised there were limitations to group classes and sought the instruction she needed from videos online. 

“We all have different bodies and if my teacher doesn’t have a belly, how will they know what the problems are of having a big belly,” she explains, laughing.

“I’m a big busted person and if the teacher isn’t how are they going to understand that when I’m doing a Halasana [plough pose] I’m almost choking to death!”

Singh started filming herself to monitor her progress and then began posting clips of her yoga poses on Instagram.

‘Online trolls’

Soon she was inundated with messages, mainly from foreigners at first but then from Indian women saying that Singh was an inspiration to them.

“I’ve been overwhelmed by some people saying they would feel alienated in a room full of perfect yoga bodies, how they would feel that everyone is watching them.

“There’s an idea of not showing your body if you’re big bodied. You’re supposed to hide everything because its not appealing or it’s not something people like to see but that’s just something that’s been sold to us,” she insists.

The response has not all been positive however. Singh says she has been the victim of body shaming online.

“Indian men have not been encouraging at all. There are a lot of people who write very nasty comments. They would say something like ‘You’re just a fat blob, you look just like an elephant or bear, or you’re unfit or it’s because you’re eating so much food. 

“I completely ignore these things. You can’t fight Internet trolls. I don’t know these people so why should it bother me?”

Singh, who currently weighs 73kg, says she will continue trying to sell “a more positive body image” and “challenge notions of fitness and beauty”.

“I’m not aiming to have this thin figure but I am aiming to have a beautiful flow and make my body strong through yoga,” she says, smiling.