Vandalism of 1860 monument in Vereulam insults the heritage of Indian indentured workers and their descendants

Claro is implementing a gradual change to its Claro TV+ Box, which involves disabling the integration with the Alexa assistant developed by Amazon. Marcio Carvalho, Claro's Chief Marketing Officer (CMO), informed Tecnoblog in an interview that this decision originated from Amazon itself, which opted to end the program to introduce third-party hardware across Latin America.

Since its launch in 2022, the Claro receiver had the functionality to activate Alexa. Users could issue commands near the remote control to perform common tasks, such as checking the calendar, knowing the temperature, or checking weather forecasts.

The transition began on May 12, when the latest devices provided by Claro stopped having access to Alexa. Although older customers still have the feature, it will be completely removed on October 5. According to Carvalho, the use of this functionality did not reach the expected level among the operator's customer base, as 'we expected it to be used more'.

Even without Alexa, the receivers continue to accept voice commands through the button present on the remote control. The company clarified that these commands can be used to change channels (by name or number), search for content by title, genre, or cast, open applications, and execute commands within those applications.

Is a new assistant coming?

Claro's CMO also communicated that the partnership with Amazon remains relevant in other areas, such as cloud computing services and content provision via Prime Video. The executive expressed respect for Amazon's decision.

Regarding interaction with the content receiver, Claro employees are already developing a project to integrate a new artificial intelligence assistant. This new system aims to help consumers navigate the pay TV catalog, being capable of controlling the television, but focusing primarily on searching and suggesting movies, series, and programs.

Claro TV+'s future functionality will depend on an orchestration system capable of triggering different AI models according to user needs. This technical approach has been adopted by several technology companies, allowing them not to be dependent on a single provider and to switch providers if costs increase excessively. Claro receivers are equipped with microphones and use four horizontally arranged RGB LEDs, a visually similar arrangement to that found in products using Google Assistant.

The ninth Iranian film festival opened in Tokyo, Japan, on Friday. The event took place at the Libra Hall of the Minato City Gender Equality Center. The festival was organized by the Cultural Attaché Office of the Islamic Republic of Iran in Japan in collaboration with the Minato City International Affairs Center, the Minato City Municipality, the NGO MOCT, and the Tehran Museum of World Cultures, according to ILNA agency.

The central theme of this year's festival is the memory of the 'Fallen Children of Minaab' and the contemplation of the human aspects of this tragedy through various programs and works.

On February 28, the Shajareh Tayebe Primary School in Minaab, Hormozgan Province, became the site of a devastating massacre following the start of strikes against Iran by the United States and Israel. When dozens of girls and boys aged 7 to 12 were starting lessons, the school was attacked by a rocket, causing the building to collapse. The children and teachers were buried under the rubble. Iranian authorities confirmed the final death toll as 168 people, with at least 95 injured, which was one of the most horrific events of the first day of the conflict.

During the opening ceremony, which was attended by the Iranian Ambassador to Japan, the Iranian Cultural Attaché, and various Iranian and Japanese cultural and artistic figures, the family of the deceased Makan Nasiri was present as honored guests. Makan Nasiri was a seven-year-old Iranian boy who died as a result of a US missile strike. He is the only child from this attack whose remains have never been found after 140 days of searching under the rubble. An empty grave has been created in his honor, and his belongings—a blood-stained blue sweater and a pair of cream sneakers—are kept in a glass cabinet at the local mosque. Experts believe that the direct missile strike on Makan Nasiri left no discoverable remains.

The renowned musician, composer, and researcher of South Iranian music, Mohsen Sharifiian, will perform on Saturday, playing pieces on the neyb (flute) in memory of the children of Minaab.

The festival includes six feature films and two documentaries, all screened with Japanese subtitles. Among the feature films are 'Land of Angels' (2026) by Babak Hajepashi, 'Tears of Hoor' (2025) by Mehdi Jafari, 'Aromatic' (2023) by Hadi Moghadamdoost, 'No Appointment' (2022) by Behrouz Shoaibi, 'Bodyguard' (2016) by Ibrahim Hatamiakia, and 'Wind Carpet' (2003) by Kamal Tabrizi. The documentaries include 'Golden Blood of Ameneh' (2025) by Habiba Ahmadzadeh and 'Minaab' (2026).

Another significant part of the festival was the invitation extended to the director and Japanese actor from the film 'Wind Carpet,' which is a joint production by Iran and Japan. A panel discussion and speeches by these guests are planned after the film screening.

The ninth Iranian film festival in Tokyo is open to the public and will run until August 2.

Evolutionary psychologist Adriano Lameira conducted a study to test two hypotheses regarding the volume of the vocal repertoire in primates. The analysis revealed that the number of animals in a group does not influence the richness of their vocal repertoire.

The analysis covered the vocal repertoires of 77 primate species and showed that their vocal stock depends on several factors: where the species lives predominantly (on land or in trees), its body mass, and the interaction of these two characteristics.

It was established that in arboreal primates, the volume of the vocal repertoire increased proportionally with an increase in their body size. For other species, there was no dependence on body size, but the habitat became the determining factor: a terrestrial lifestyle was associated with a smaller repertoire than expected, while a mixed lifestyle was associated with a larger one.

Previously, according to the social brain hypothesis, it was believed that a species' brain size correlates with its social complexity, i.e., group size. This link has been observed in primates, some cetaceans, birds, and carnivorous mammals. In 2005, scientists demonstrated that in 42 primate species, group size was related to vocal repertoire: the larger the group, the more diverse the sounds the species made. This was explained by the need for more precise communication to maintain complex social bonds, which in turn resembled the process of human speech emergence.

However, modern revisions of many primate species' dictionaries show that the direct link with group size is not always obvious. Furthermore, there are other potential factors influencing the size of the vocal repertoire, such as the animal's physique and its habitat.

Adriano Lameira from Warwick University analyzed the vocal repertoires of 77 primate species, including humans, studying their relationship with group size, brain size, body mass, and type of lifestyle (arboreal, terrestrial, or mixed), taking into account phylogenetic relationships between species.

The study found that neither group size nor brain size was a predictor of vocal repertoire size (p > 0.05). Instead, the habitat played a decisive role. In arboreal species, the habitat interacted with body size: every doubling of body mass increased the repertoire by approximately 28 percent (p = 0.027), whereas this dependence was not observed in terrestrial and mixed species.

Habitat also had an independent effect: the repertoires of species with a mixed lifestyle were 17 percent higher than predicted by a model based only on group size, brain size, and body size. Arboreal species' repertoires exceeded the prediction by 8 percent, while terrestrial ones lagged by 6 percent.

According to Lameira, the data refute the idea that primate vocal diversity is due to social complexity. The main factors appear to be physical parameters—body size and environment. The researcher hypothesized that the emergence of language in humans might have been a consequence of our ancestors' arboreal lifestyle, rather than a result of social structure.

Anthropologists previously noted that chimpanzees in the Issa Valley, living in a mosaic environment where dense forests neighbor open areas, more often move on two limbs, but do so along branches rather than on the ground. This observation led scientists to suggest that the development of bipedalism in the ancestors of modern humans was not directly linked to the transition to a terrestrial lifestyle.