“We are deeply saddened that our beloved father passed away today,” professor Hawking’s children, Lucy, Robert, and Tim said in a statement carried by Britain’s Press Association news agency.

“He was a great scientist and an extraordinary man whose work and legacy will live on for many years.”

Hawking defied predictions he would only live for a few years after developing a form of motor neurone disease that left him confined to a wheelchair.

“His courage and persistence with his brilliance and humour inspired people across the world,” the family said.

“He once said, ‘It would not be much of a universe if it wasn’t home to the people you love.’ We will miss him forever.”

This year is expected to welcome more than 800 international disciples of the art of muay thai from 60 countries.

“The World Wai Khru Muay Thai Ceremony 2018 provides continuity that ensures the art form is being properly preserved and curated for future generations as many consider wai khru to be the ‘heart and soul’ of muay thai,” said Yuthasak Supasorn, governor of the Tourism Authority of Thailand.

“Wai khru is much more than a ceremonial kick boxing ritual, performance art or just paying respect to one’s teacher. It is an important part of Thailand’s cultural and martial arts history with origins that can be traced back to ancient battlefields when Thai soldiers fought for independence, centuries before muay thai developed into a martial art for sport.”

This upcoming event has added significance, as it falls on the celebration of Nai Khanom Tom Day on March 17. He was an almost mythological muay thai folk hero and warrior who is also hailed as the Father of Muay Thai.

It features heaps of tasty Thai food, lots of quality handicraft shopping, muay thai boxing souvenirs and memorabilia plus free cultural and historical lessons for good measure. Some of the more interesting Thai local experiences include the ancient arts of yantra tattooing and yantra calligraphy, plus Aranyik sword making from Ayutthaya’s famed sword village.

Thai martial art performances are interactive with audience members encouraged to participate in energy testing through ancient muay thai boxing drills that include kicking a banana tree, punching limes and chopping water. Numerous Thai food stalls will be serving modern and retroperiod interpretations on traditional Thai cuisine.

The government launched the crackdown on the sex toys last month, threatening offenders with heavy jail terms over the dolls which, it says, are “very unnatural”.

The action has propelled the issue of sex dolls to the top of the news agenda and made them a hot topic of conversation and debate on social media, dividing opinion in the largely conservative southern African country.

“Being a Christian nation, obviously we are anchored in Christian principles and one of the values is morality and ethics,” Minister of National Guidance and Religious Affairs Godfridah Sumaili told AFP.

Selling or using a sex doll is against Zambian law, she said, vowing to ensure they are not bought on the internet and imported.

“The use of sex dolls is definitely in contradiction to our natural heritage and our principles,” Sumaili added.

“The law actually forbids anybody to trade (in) and to use such objects — and so this is why we are saying for Zambians that this is a very unnatural thing.”

‘A lifeless object’

The minister said the ban was necessary after media reports emerged of sex dolls being imported into Zambia, apparently from Asia. Police are investigating, she added.

In recent months, Zambia’s independent and semi-official press have devoted many column inches to reports of sex shops popping up around the capital Lusaka selling sex dolls, as well as chronicling the backlash.

“God created man and woman for sexual satisfaction — but for a man or woman to use a lifeless object is immoral,” Sumaili said.

“Let’s not import foreign beliefs and experiences. Let us just believe in what we are.”

– ‘Help combat AIDS’ –

The manufacture of sex dolls has become increasingly sophisticated, with China developing custom-made “smart” dolls that can talk, play music and turn on dishwashers.

Sex dolls’ inventors say they can cure loneliness and help elderly men who lack female companionship.

In Zambia, the dolls made of silicone were reportedly in a variety of shapes and shades, but an AFP reporter failed to find any shops selling them.

The Patriots for Economic Progress (PEP) — a fringe liberal party in Zambia — claims the government’s attitude to sex dolls reflects its increasingly authoritarian tendencies under President Edgar Lungu.

“The argument that the Bible does not allow the use of any objects is wrong,” said PEP party chief Sean Tembo.

“The same Bible encourages free will and it will be wrong to send someone to prison for choosing to use sex dolls. Some men have low self-esteem and cannot propose love.”

Tembo said sex dolls could even tackle the spread of HIV/AIDS — in a country with a 12.4 percent adult infection rate.

“Men can use sex dolls and this will help reduce the cases of AIDS,” he said, contesting the minister’s claim they were illegal.

“There is no law that bans the importation or use of sex dolls and there is no law that criminalises masturbation. The use of sex dolls will be in private, in one’s bedroom and not in a public place.”

Privacy violation?

Zambia is a largely conservative nation, where homosexuality is illegal and anyone in an intimate same-sex relationship faces up to 14 years in jail.

Officials say that sex dolls fall under a constitutional law against making, owning, importing, selling or displaying “obscene matters or things” — punishable with a maximum prison term of five years.

No shops openly sell them in Zambia, though they are available from international internet suppliers.

The state-owned Zambia Daily Mail reported Sumaili’s campaign under the headline “No toying with sex dolls”, and later ran a feature on how the policy was a constant talking point on public minibuses.

“I would order a sex doll without hesitation,” the newspaper quoted one unidentified male passenger as saying.

“I am assured of a disease-free relationship because a sex doll will not cheat on me. They are not materialistic and will forever remain faithful.

“Government is now violating our privacy as citizens,” he said.

Lusaka resident, Jane Kaluba, 25, told AFP that sex dolls were a test of how best to balance morality with individual rights.

“I don’t support the use of sex dolls but I still feel that one should be free to choose what one wants,” she said.

WITH AN increasing number of Japanese opting for coffee over the more traditional tea, coffee shops all over the country are offering unique services to draw them in, such as reserving high-end coffee beans for particular customers and allowing customers to grind their own beans.

There’s even a place that offers a monthly all-you-can-drink coffee “subscription”.

Grand Cru Cafe Ginza is a coffee shop in the Ginza Six shopping complex that opened in Chuo Ward, Tokyo, in April last year. The cafe sells roasted coffee beans stored in wine bottles, each of them labelled with information such as the coffee’s country of origin and name of the farm where the beans were cultivated.

Aiming to offer “cups of supreme coffee,” the beans sold by the cafe must meet strict standards in terms of their origin, cultivation methods, selection, transportation and roast.

Bottles range in price from 10,000 yen to 120,000 yen Bt2,940-Bt35,300) excluding tax and each bottle makes five or six cups of coffee.

A sign promotes Coffee Mafia’s 3,000 yenpermonth allyoucandrink service at its branch in Iidabashi, Tokyo. /Japan NewsYomiuri 

“Experienced baristas carefully handle coffee beans of the highest quality. I hope customers enjoy their special tastes and aromas,” says Takuro Tomita, the general manager of the salon.

Some cafes let you feel like you’re a barista, as they allow customers to make their own coffee. At Drip & Drop Coffee Supply Sanjo in Kyoto, for example, customers can grind coffee beans themselves using a manual mill. Customers then choose one of three coffee-making methods, such as drip filter, and make their own coffee.

The price of a cup starts at 450 yen including tax.

According to the Tokyo-based All Japan Coffee Association, consumption of coffee beans in Japan reached a record high of about 470,000 tons in 2016, up by more than 100,000 tons from 20 years ago.

Consumption temporarily declined in 2011 after the Great East Japan Earthquake, but it’s been increasing since then.

In recent years, freshly made coffee sold at convenience stores have proved popular, while a flood of specialised “third wave” coffee shops, which pay special attention to bean origin and roasting methods, have appeared. This has further expanded the scope of the coffee market.

Stores offering a flat-rate subscription service have also emerged.

At Coffee Mafia’s Iidabashi cafe, which opened in mid-January in Chiyoda Ward, Tokyo, customers who pay a monthly fee of 3,000 yen can enjoy one cup of coffee per visit as many times as they like. Members can visit another store in the same chain as well.

“I got the idea from flat-rate music and video streaming services,” store manager Koichiro Okumura explains.

At Alpha Beta Coffee Club in Tokyo’s Jiyugaoka district, membership involves a monthly fee of 9,000 yen. A single cup of coffee usually costs 500 yen, but members can drink as much as they like. They can also choose from three kinds of coffee beans, which change every month. The cafe is equipped with Wi-Fi, and many people bring their laptops and work there.

Spacee Coffee utilises restaurants that are only open at night and rents them during the day on weekdays in six locations, including the Shinjuku and Shibuya districts of Tokyo. Each Spacee Coffee store is equipped with Wi-Fi and visitors can get a cup of coffee for just 50 yen if they register as a member for free. Customers can stay at each store for up to an hour per visit.

“There are a wide variety of coffee shops, ranging from those focusing on high-end products to those targeting ordinary people, which is unique to Japan,” says Yoko Kawaguchi, author of “Coffee People”, a cafe-related books.

Around 50 young students from the Bronx, most of them black or Latino, have been selected for “Project Destined,” a scheme designed to teach them the ins and outs of financing and real estate and sponsored by J.Lo and A-Rod — as the retired baseball superstar Rodriguez is known.

The youths underwent intense instruction from lawyers, bankers, mortgage companies and realtors, but the course will not be just theoretical.

The student team that comes up with the best business plan will have the chance to buy a building worth $1.5 million in the Bronx and develop it.

In this real estate mecca, its skyline in constant flux and whose most famous alumnus Donald Trump is now in the White House, good contacts can open unimaginable doors.

That was the philosophy of the project’s two founders, Fred Greene and Cedric Bobo, both of them successful black businessmen who wanted to pass on their knowledge and experience to kids from humble backgrounds.

“What we are doing here is giving kids a chance to work with us almost like apprentices,” said Bobo. “Kids come in, analyze properties, we then buy them and we share a portion of the profits.”

“We want to put owners and stakeholders in the communities where they live, work and play. If we do that, we do a lot,” said Bobo, an experienced investment banker for the Carlyle Group, one of the power houses of Wall Street.

Before moving to the Bronx, where more than 35 percent of the population live in poverty, the program ran in Detroit, Memphis and Miami, helping young people from poorer backgrounds learn the ropes of business.

– Escaping the ghetto –

At Yankee stadium in the Bronx, the students — split up into six teams — lay out their business strategies to a panel of experts that includes Jonathan Gray, head of the Blackstone Group, and Lopez, the mega-star singer who herself grew up in the Bronx but who is selling her Manhattan penthouse apartment for $27 million.

The winning team will be the one with the most persuasive strategy that secures the greatest profit.

The winners will then become minority shareholders in the development and receive some of the earnings from the property, helping pay their university tuition as long as they stay enrolled in the project and take part in more courses online.

In a pre-training session, Rodriguez chats with participants on an impressive balcony overlooking Times Square.

“Real estate is a way out of the ‘hood,” he says. “For real estate is the one game where you can get rich .. it doesn’t matter if you don’t have any money and it doesn’t matter what market, you can go buy real estate all over the world with no money.”

The ex-ball star says he is living proof of that: he bought a duplex in southern Florida in 2003 and now owns more than 10,000 apartments through his company Monument Capital Management.

“I’m really excited to learn how the real estate market works,” said Jovani Amaxtal, an 18-year-old philosophy student whose Mexican mother works slicing loaves for street vendors. “That’s where the money is!”

Don’t settle for less

“I come from very humble beginnings. My mother worked two jobs. But I believed I was going to be the leader of my family and I was going to make a difference,” said Rodriguez, who grew up in Washington Heights, a Dominican neighborhood in New York.

“Don’t settle for anything less. This is the American dream,” he urged the students.

The price of a square meter of real estate in the Bronx is $3,081: the average annual income of a family is $35,176.

“It’s a lot of hard work but it’s something that everybody could do,” said Charles Wu, one of the project instructors. “You don’t have to have huge money. You can start small and you can build a portfolio over time.”

“Now I’ve told my friend, like, when I am 27, I am going to own the building, or two or five,” said student Andrea Alarcon, 17, who was born in Ecuador and whose mother works long shifts as a waitress to provide for the family.

“Being a homeowner? I’d love to! Having a house under my name… I am ready!” said Ruben Germosa, 18, who the week before had visited Harvard Business School with Bobo, his mouth wide open in awe. He is considering applying next year to the university but still does not know how he would pay the tuition fees.

Last weekend’s 10th Thailand International Balloon Festival in Chiang Mai far exceeded the expectations of organiser Sornchat “Aom” Krainara. It would seem there’s nowhere for events like this to go but up.

Confusion might offer a little ballast, though. This event, held this time at the Cowboy Army Riding Club, keeps moving to different locales and tends to get mixed up with another balloonist summit, which this year took place in Chiang Rai.

Aom acknowledges that the “other organiser” invested way more in promotion, but insists that her International Balloon Festival gives its target group more. “Fortunately, a lot of people appreciate our uniqueness. I’m just letting it grow by itself in a self-sufficient way.”

Aom is proud of the “lifestyle content” offered alongside the spectacle of magnificent giant balloons hovering in the air.

“A hot-air balloon can only be on show an hour at a time, so what’s the next gimmick?” she asks rhetorically. “You think about modern consumer behaviour – they also come here for the great-tasting food and to have fun with the music. And we appeal as much to expatriates and foreign tourists as we do local people.”

Aom explains that the event has repeatedly shifted venues because landlords, expecting to earn a profit from hot air, keep raising the rent.

The Cowboy Army Riding Club is a good location, she says, but she knew in advance that aircraft landing and taking off from the international airport just to the south posed a serious hazard for any balloons that might drift into the flight path.

“So I had a backup plan. I changed not only the venue but also the time, moving it to the first week of March, in tourism’s low season. I wanted to stimulate tourism too.

“It used to be in the first week of December, when the cool temperatures best suit ballooning. My foreign friends said I was crazy to move it to March or April in Chiang Mai because of the smog. That’s when foreigners leave Chiang Mai.

“But we have our other strengths!”

The highlight of the event was a truly spectacular wedding of ballooning skills and the fiercely dynamic music of the percussion group Tiger Drum Thailand. At one point the musicians leapt from hovering balloons onto their huge drums.

“And we had the Lanna Orchestra, whose conductor and composer improvised a show specially for the event. Thais knew the actions and music were adapted from those of khon, the classical masked dance, though foreigners usually see khon characters as just ‘monsters’. Music, though, is universal.”

The show also included Aom’s first investment in digital technology, which facilitated registration and ticket sales. Interestingly enough, she says, it fits perfectly with Thai ambitions to establish a sufficiency economy.

“First, it helps reduce global warming by eliminating the need for paper and plastic. Of course, people pointed out the paper signs around the site, and some of the entrepreneurs and artists involved didn’t at first understand the digital information transfer.”

More Thais are going to have to embrace digital technology, Aom says.

“I know a young artist in Bangkok who sells his work online. I once visited the Van Gogh Museum in Holland and found many premium products on sale related to the artist. It’s my dream to do this sort of thing for Thai artists who don’t know how to market their work.

“I can help some of them as a private businessperson. I’m not a technology provider – I’m a solutions provider, and I can blend the best of the old and new generations.”

Back to the balloons, a wonderful mountain range of tethered, bobbing colour. By evening the hues glowed in synchronisation with the music of the Lanna Orchestra, which extended to “La Vie en Rose”.

Unfortunately German opera singer Thomas Kiessling couldn’t perform this year because of ill health. But Tiger Drum’s fantastic performance of “Prahathan” compensated for the tenor’s absence.

Eight of its members wore the masks of Ramakien giants and danced to the rhythms of their own drums and the Lanna Orchestra. The climax, the leap from a balloon onto a drum, included a thrilling somersault that earned cheers and enthusiastic applause.

Around the grounds were art exhibits and artists leading workshops, fashion and jewellery shows by famous Thai designers and traditional crafts from Sop Moei Arts.

Before it was over, Aom was already feeling tired, but she spoke of persevering despite “many set¬backs”.

“I’e come to expect setbacks, so I feel I’m allowed to be arrogant next time. The festivals so far have been only hotair balloons, plus music and food from several leading hotels. Now, I’ve partnered with the Thailand Convention & Exhibition Bureau to implement a new marketing strategy based on four elements – balloons, music, art and culture.

“The balloonists and musicians take care of their own presentation, but art and culture can’t do that, so they have no inherent ‘added value’.

“But Sop Moei Arts, for example, adds value to the beautiful craft pieces made by Karen people – textiles and interior decor. Kent Gregory, who founded the non-profit organisation in 1988, told me it was late in revealing itself to the world through the Internet. So I invited him to create a showcase here and work with an Ikea interior designer from Stockholm.

“That’s how this festival became more of a lifestyle experience, with many workshops. I like to give Thais a chance to show off, like Narakorn Konkaew with her ‘Wakeup Rabbit’ products.”

Now that the Thai International has passed its 10th anniversary, Aom is reticent about what she has in mind for 2019, but she promises it will take the country by storm with “an unprecedented phenomenon”.

“I’m planning to build a permanent team to handle social media so I can concentrate on the content. But let’s just say it’s my business platform to keep growing in the future.”

There’s a builtin GPS receiver, a G-sensor, a high-capacity Lipolymer battery, a snapshot button and Wi-Fi connectivity. Get one for Bt5,500.

New Galaxy discovered

Samsung’s Galaxy S9+ smartphone boasts an excellent 6.2-inch Super Amoled display with 1,440×2960-pixel resolution, good enough for HDR10 technology. You have 6GB of memory and 256GB of storage, a dual 12MP rear camera with f/1.5 aperture and an 8MP front camera with f/1.7. Expect to pay Bt37,900.

Fill the whole house

The Reference RW1 Wireless Speaker is part of the Stream Wireless Multi-Room Audio System from Klipsch with maximum acoustic output of 100dB and 30 watts of output power – 26.5 watts for the woofer and 3.5 watts for the tweeter. It’s in stores for Bt12,900.

Hear only the music

Sony’s Walkman NWZX300 High-Resolution Audio player is housed in an aluminium-milled frame for minimising external noise. It can play 11.2MHz DSD native files, which are tops in quality. The accompanying digital amp reduces distortion and Bluetooth connection can handle LDAC high-resolution wireless format. The going rate is Bt21,990.

Just add popcorn

Acer’s V7850 4K Ultra HD projector can turn any home into a cinema. It’s capable of a 65-inch display from two metres at 3,840×2,160-pixel resolution. The 3D DLP projector has brightness of 2,200 lumen and HDNI and HDMI 2.0 ports for connecting to movie sources. It retails for Bt109,000.

A sleek and fast tablet computer with a sharp display and good sound quality, the new Lenovo Tab4 8 Plus sells for slightly less than Bt11,000 making it a good buy for those who want the latest in technology without breaking the bank.

Boasting an 8-inch vibrant Full HD display with 1920 x 1200 pixel resolution and supporting wide-angle view, along with two frontfacing speakers configured in Dolby Atmos sound enhancement technology, it is great for streaming and watching HD movies with apps like TrueID TV.

The Dolby Atmos makes the movie sound exciting while the vibrant IPS display make it pleasing to watch. During the test, I watched several HD movies streamed with TrueID TV and iflix app and enjoyed all of them.

The Tab4 8 Plus looks sleek with an aluminium frame and glass covers on both the front and back. It’s skinny too at just 7mm and weighs 300 grams.

Although the Tab4 8 Plus is not powered by a flagship processor, it is fast enough. Its menus and touchscreen were responsive during the test and apps ran fast and smooth.

The tablet is powered by Qualcomm Snapdragon 625 octacore 64-bit processor running at 2 GHz. It has four gigabytes of working memory or RAM and 64GB of internal storage, which is expandable with a microSD card by up to 128GB. The Tab4 8 Plus runs on Google Android 7.1 operating system.

The tablet also has fast wireless connection of Wi-Fi 802.11ac so it can stream multimedia content from networked storage fast.

I tested it on TrueMove H’s LTE 4G network and was pleased at the speeds it downloaded apps and uploaded my snapshots to my Google Photos cloud storage.

I doublechecked the speeds by using Ookla Speedtest app to measure the connection speed and found that it achieved the download speed of 61.13 Mbps and upload speed of 31.94 Mbps.

The Tab4 8 Plus has a fingerprint reader embedded on the power button on the right side for fast unlocking of the display.

The Tab4 8 Plus is designed to share among family members to watch video clips. Everyone can have their own accounts – complete with their own password, settings, wallpaper, and social media accounts.

The Tab4 8 comes with a 5-megapixel front camera and 8MP rear camera both of good quality. I found that the rear camera captured beautiful shots for a mobile device.

And the Lenovo tablet supports playing High-Resolution Audio files of FLAC 24-bit/192kHz. I tried playing FLAC 24-bit/192kHz files on the Tab4 8 using Sony’s MDR1ABT headphones and loved both the clarity and the bass. The Hi-Res Audio music files played smoothly too.

Lenovo Tab4 8 comes pre-installed with useful Microsoft Office apps – Excel, PowerPoint, Word, Outlook and OneNote – so you can work on the go.

The tablet has a large LiPolymer battery of 4,850 mAh capacity that can last up to 8 hours. It recharges the battery with a USBC port and it supports fast charging.

Lenovo Tab4 8 has a suggested retail price of Bt10,990.

KEY SPECIFICATIONS

– OS: Android Nougat 7.1

– 4G network: LTE

– SIM: dual nano SIM slots

– CPU: Qualcomm Snapdragon 625 OctaCore Processor (2.0GHz)

– Display: 8-inch (1920 x 1200) LCD IPS Multitouch

– Memory: 4GB

– Storage: 64GB, expandable with microSD slot up ti 128GB

– Sound: Dual front speakers

– Cameras: 5MP Front , 8MP rear Camera

– Wireless connectivity: Wi-Fi 802.11 a/b/g/n/ac, Bluetooth 4.2

– Connection port: USBC

– Battery: LiPolymer 4850 mAh up to 8 Hr; fast charging supported

– Dimension: 210 x 123 x 7 mm

– Weight: 300g

Adobe Photoshop Fix – a mobile app that’s just as powerful as the desktop version and probably easier to use – makes retouching photos a lot of fun.

It’s best used on an iPad Pro and with the Apple Pencil stylus, whose combination of power and precision team well the intuitive user-interface of the app.

If you love showing off your photographic handiwork on the social networks, Photoshop Fix is a must-have. Among other functions, you can smooth, liquefy, lighten and “heal” pictures and get them just the way you want.

First you’ll need to sign up for a free Adobe ID, which can done within Fix and via Facebook or Google. With Adobe’s Creative-Sync service, the images you edit will be stored, ready for further enhancement and use in other Adobe mobile and desktop apps.

Adobe has made Fix a free app – and I found its functions ample for my needs – but if you want more powerful tools beyond those provided, you can pay a little cash to subscribe to Adobe’s Creative Cloud Photography plan.

Creative Cloud lets you open and edit Photoshop files in Fix and send the images to Photoshop CC for further refinement – layers, masks and all. Or you can open and enhance Lightroom images and send them directly to your Lightroom Collections.

All edits are synced across all your computers and devices. If you make a change on iPad, it will show up on your desktop.

I tested the app on an iPad Pro 10.5-inch with the Apple Pencil. The work went fast and smoothly results and all tools were very responsive.

The first thing you see is the gallery page, with thumbnails of your already edited photos. Add another by tapping the plus sign on the left, which pops up options for locating the image to be uploaded. They can come from Google Photos, Dropbox, Facebook, Lightroom, Creative Cloud or the gallery on your iPad, or any shot taken with the Pro’s camera.

Once there’s a picture in place to edit, you see the tools across the bottom of the screen – Crop, Adjust, Liquefy, Heal, Smooth, Light, Colour, Paint, Defocus and Vignette.

The Heal tool works some kind of magic. If there appears to be a tree branch growing out of someone’s head in the picture, for example, use this tool to make the branch vanish. It snatches and blends in patches of pixels from the adjacent clear area so it looks like that tree never existed.

You can do the same if someone’s unwittingly walked into the background of your landscape, or if unsightly telephone wires are draped in front of your beautiful home. Just use your finger or the Apple Pencil to paint them out.

To make your portraits truly outstanding, the Crop, Liquefy, Smooth and Defocus tools are amazing.

Liquefy tool is “faceware”. It automatically places seven dots on key characteristics of the subject’s face – forehead, eyes, cheekbones, lips and chin. You can push, pull, rotate and swell these areas individually to reshape subtly or drastically.

Smooth gets rid of pimples and wrinkles and softens or sharpens any part of the photo.

With most cameras these days you can get a neat bokeh effect – the background out of focus to make the subject stand out more – but if you forgot to do so when taking the shot, Defocus will handle it after the fact. You simply activate the tool and “paint” the background with your finger.

This can be done even more precisely with the Apple Pencil – Photoshop Fix will blur the background for you.

You can change your subject’s hair colour with the Paint tool. Choose the hue with the tool’s colour-picker and use the Apple Pencil to paint over the hair.

The Crop tool is good for improving composition, especially in portraits. It’s ready to rotate or flip the photo horizontally or vertically. The crop preset ratios are square, 5:4, 4:3, 7:5 and 3:2.

If the colours seem pale, select the Colour tool and boost the saturation to make the range more vivid. The opposite is possible if the colours appear too garish. If the picture is too dark or too light, go to the Light tool and adjust upward or downward.

An under-exposed shot can be fixed with the Adjust tool itself, which works with a slide bar. Adjust will also correct contrast and saturation and add “warmth” to the photo. Shadows can be made brighter.

The Vignette tool reduces brightness, focus or saturation around the edges for a striking frame effect.

When you’re done and ready to share online, just tap the upload icon in the top right corner and choose the destination, such as Facebook or Instagram.

If you have an iPad Pro, this app is highly recommended. It also works on an iPhone, and an Android version is also available.

KEY FACTS

– Vendor: Adobe Systems Inc

– Size: 187.9 megabytes

– Category: Photo & Video

– Compatibility: iOS 10.0 or later, iPhone, iPad, iPod touch.

– Price: Free

The singer-songwriter and rapper designed a gift package, which will be available in Southeast Asia exclusively at the one-of-its-kind GD Official Store on the leading eCommerce company Lazada.

Dubbed “The Floral Pathway”, the package comprises such memorabilia as a GD hand-printed mug and bracelet. These items are wrapped in a fancy floral-motif box that was also designed by the star.

The floral motif is GD’s tribute to his flowers, as he calls his fans, and conveys the hope that they will walk down the road to happiness. More than 7,000 gift boxes are up for grabs in Malaysia, the Philippines, Singapore and Indonesia. In Thailand, they become available on Tuesday (March 13.)

To rev up excitement levels across the region, Lazada has invited fans to share their favourite GD song on its Facebook fanpage and explain why that number meant so much to them. Fans are also encouraged to hold gatherings that will be streamed live online and play games to win prizes and bid their idol farewell. They are rewarded from today through Sunday (March 11) with a chance to win limited edition souvenirs from GD. To enter, post a public comment about GD on Lazada’s Facebook Fanpage (https://www.facebook.com/LazadaThailandShopping) with the hashtags #GDLimitedEdition #KwonJiYong and share the post to their own Facebook Page, tagging three friends who are fans of GD or Big Bang.

The winner will be announced on Monday (March 12) and the winning comment wins its writer a special GD souvenir.

Get a sneak peek at GD’s special gift today at https://lzd.co/2CqEnVf.