'Star Wars: Episode VII' to resume filming

The cast of "Star Wars: Episode VII" unites well-known "Star Wars" names with some up-and-coming actors. At least one cast member, Daisy Ridley, is so new she has just a few acting credits to her name. You can see her in the back right of this cast photo, wearing a necklace and talking to "Star Wars" veteran Carrie Fisher. Here's who she'll star with:

Actors Pip Andersen, left, and Crystal Clarke were picked from an open casting call to join the movie. Andersen is skilled in the training discipline parkour, and "Episode VII" will be one of Clarke's first feature films.

The rumors about Academy Award-winning actress Lupita Nyong'o joining the cast turned out to be true. In May, she was announced as the newest actress to join the saga. Nyong'o won the best supporting actress Oscar for her breakthrough role in "12 Years a Slave."

Gwendoline Christie, currently known as Brienne of Tarth on HBO's "Game Of Thrones," joins "Episode VII" and will next be seen as Commander Lyme in "The Hunger Games: Mockingjay - Part 1."

John Boyega is best known for the 2011 sci-fi action comedy "Attack the Block." Boyega has been one of the actors rumored to be a top choice for the lead role.

Adam Driver is a multifaceted actor who'll presumably get to show more of his range in "Star Wars: Episode VII." While he's best known for playing a quirky love interest on "Girls," Driver has also appeared in feature films "J. Edgar," "Lincoln," "Frances Ha" and "Inside Llewyn Davis."

Oscar Isaac had a breakthrough role in 2013 as the cranky singer-songwriter Llewyn Davis in the drama "Inside Llewyn Davis." We can't imagine his work in "Star Wars: Episode VII" will require him to sing, but it would be awesome if it did; Isaac has proved he's got a great set of pipes.

Andy Serkis is setting himself up to have a busy few years. The celebrated actor will next appear in this summer's "Dawn of the Planet of the Apes," which will be followed by "Star Wars: Episode VII" next year. After that, he's expected to appear in another "Tintin" movie, "The Adventures of Tintin: Prisoners of the Sun."

Does the name Domhnall Gleeson sound familiar? That might be because you remember him as Bill Weasley in the last two movies of the "Harry Potter" franchise. But Gleeson has established himself with a host of other projects, including 2010's "Never Let Me Go" and 2013's "About Time." Suffice to say that if you don't know Gleeson by now, you will after "Star Wars: Episode VII."

When we learned that "Episode VII" is supposed to take place 30 years after "Return of the Jedi" and feature a trio of newbies alongside some familiar faces, we were ready to bet the house that Mark Hamill's Luke Skywalker would be one of the recognizable stars. It was an easy guess to make, though; Hamill has long been considered an unspoken done deal.

Carrie Fisher was one of the original "Star Wars" cast members who initially said she was on board the new movie, only for her rep to backtrack and say the actress was kidding. But Abrams' announcement is no joke: the former Princess Leia has returned.

After playing coy with the press for months, Harrison Ford has officially been announced as a part of the "Star Wars: Episode VII" cast. The actor is expected to reprise his role of Han Solo.

We can't be the only ones who are supremely relieved to see that Anthony Daniels, the voice of C-3PO, will be back in action.

Obviously, you can't have Daniels' C-3PO without Kenny Baker's R2-D2. Just the thought of splitting up the droids is heartbreaking!

Peter Mayhew is probably somewhere warming up his voice for that famous Chewbacca roar. The actor was rumored to be reprising the character in "Star Wars: Episode VII," but it wasn't official until Abrams' announcement.

Max von Sydow is one of the veteran actors joining the upcoming "Star Wars" movie. It isn't clear what the wide-ranging thespian will do in Abrams' picture, but we can rest assured that he'll bring his respected acting chops to the part.

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• "Star Wars: Episode VII" is reportedly set to resume filming


• It's expected to pick back up later this month


• The movie took a two-week break to let Harrison Ford heal from an on-set injury

(CNN) -- "Star Wars: Episode VII" is preparing to get back to work.

According to The Hollywood Reporter, J.J. Abrams' project is set to resume filming later this month after taking a two week break to allow Harrison Ford time to recover from an injury.

'Star Wars' cast gets two unknowns, takes break while Harrison Ford heals

Ford, 72, broke his left leg in an on-set accident in June. He underwent surgery and then entered rehab, and was recently seen walking the carpet at the "Expendables 3" movie premiere in Los Angeles.

Harrison Ford broke leg in 'Star Wars' set mishap

That said, THR notes that it's unclear if Ford is yet ready to return to London for filming. The actor is reprising his role of Han Solo in the project, which also features "Star Wars" actors Carrie Fisher and Mark Hamill and a healthy number of newcomers.

"Star Wars: Episode VII" is set to bow on December 18, 2015.

NASA sees black hole bend light

• NASA's NuSTAR searches the galaxy looking for black holes


• The black hole known as Markarian 335 is capturing and bending nearby X-ray light


• The event is literally shedding light on how Einstein's theory of relativity works in extremes

(CNN) -- NASA's black-hole hunting telescope has captured a cosmic battle between dark and light.

NuSTAR, formally known as the Nuclear Spectroscopic Telescope Array, has observed a supermassive black hole's gravity tugging on X-ray light that's being emitted near that black hole.

NASA says "The regions around supermassive black holes shine brightly in X-rays. Some of this radiation comes from a surrounding disk, and most comes from the corona, pictured here as the white light at the base of a jet. This is one possible configuration for a corona -- its actual shape is unclear."

The mystery of black holes

Black hole hunting satellite launched

New telescope to illuminate black holes

That light is getting stretched and blurred, and researchers are getting to see it all in unprecedented detail, said NASA in a news release issued today.

In this instance, the corona -- a source of X-ray light that sits near a black hole -- recently collapsed in toward the black hole that's named Markarian 335.

The NuSTAR telescope has been collecting X-rays from black holes and dying stars for the past two years.

The craft completed its primary mission earlier this year, and it was redirected to investigate Markarian 335 once scientists noticed that the black hole had become dramatically brighter. NuSTAR observed that Markarian 335's gravity sucked the corona's light, an illuminating action that NASA likened to someone shining a flashlight for astronomers.

Scientists can now see the corona "lighting up material around the black hole," which allows them to study "the most extreme light-bending effects" of Albert Einstein's theory of general relativity, said NuSTAR's principal investigator, Fiona Harrison, in the news release. She is with the California Institute of Technology.

As if NuSTAR's observations and Einstein's theories aren't mind-boggling enough, NASA says the black hole Markarian 335 "spins so rapidly that space and time are dragged around with it."

The space agency says the new observations could help scientists better understand mysterious coronas and black holes, which are thought to be formed when massive stars collapse, creating such density that not even light can escape their intense gravitational pull.

Scientists believe supermassive black holes reside in the centers of galaxies. Some are more massive and rotate faster than others.

Big first for women and math

Maryam Mirzakhani is the first woman to win mathematics' highest honor, the Fields Medal.

• The Fields Medal is often nicknamed the Nobel Prize of mathematics


• Since it was established in 1936, it previously had gone only to men


• Maryam Mirzakhani helped bring unexpected order to an area considered chaotic by many


• She hopes her receiving the award will encourage young women in the field

(CNN) -- For the first time in history, a woman has received the highest honor in mathematics, often nicknamed the Nobel Prize of mathematics.

Since it was established in 1936, the Fields Medal had gone only to men, until Wednesday, when Maryam Mirzakhani received it in Seoul, South Korea, from the International Mathematical Union.

"This is a great honor. I will be happy if it encourages young female scientists and mathematicians," Mirzakhani said, according to a statement from Stanford University, where she is a professor.

For those of us less versed in the uppermost echelons of mathematics and geometry than Mirzakhani, it's mind-twisting to understand the abstract accomplishments that got her field's highest recognition.

Mirzakhani has delved into the depths of geometry, helping bring unexpected order to an area that many of her colleagues considered chaotic and hardly tamable. And her peers have found this very exciting.

The International Mathematical Union called her long list of accomplishments in Reimann surfaces and moduli spaces "stunning."

What are those?

Simply put, those are complex geometric forms.

Anyone who has had high school algebra and geometry may remember that shapes like squares, triangles, circles and spheres are described by mathematical formulas.

But jump to more complex, roundish, theoretical objects, like perfectly formed doughnuts, ultra-warped, crisscrossed potato chips, undulating geometric pretzels or uneven blobs like amoebas.

That's getting close to the kind of math and geometry Mirzakhani works with. Go deeper, and things can appear to descend into infinite chaos.

Find that intimidating? Some bright mathematical minds do, too.

"Because of its complexities and inhomogeneity, moduli space has often seemed impossible to work on directly," the International Mathematical Union said. "But not to Mirzakhani."

But even she finds those theoretical depths challenging.

"It is like being lost in a jungle and trying to use all the knowledge that you can gather to come up with some new tricks, and with some luck you might find a way out," she said.

What's it good for?

Mirzakhani's work was not driven by any practical purpose -- like engineering -- but purely to satisfy mathematical curiosity, to create more knowledge. The implications of her work go beyond just the description of shapes.

Since her area of math also informs physicists, her work could help advance scientists' understanding of the origins of the universe and the workings of subatomic particles, which could have implications for engineering.

The International Mathematical Union praised Mirzakhani for her mastery of various contrasting aspects of mathematics.

Equally as impressive is how Mirzakhani got to where she is today.

From Tehran to Stanford

She discovered her knack for numbers in high school in her native Iran, where she grew up in the capital, Tehran. Media in Iran are also reporting about her achievement.

"It is fun -- it's like solving a puzzle or connecting the dots in a detective case," she said.

As a teenager, she gained international attention when she won gold medals in two International Math Olympiads, achieving a perfect score in one of them.

Mirzakhani got her undergraduate degree at Sharif University of Technology, then moved to the United States, where she went to work on her doctorate at Harvard University.

She was an assistant professor at Princeton University before moving to Stanford.

The Fields Medal, officially called the International Medal for Outstanding Discoveries in Mathematics, is awarded every four years. The past 52 recipients were men.

This year's medal went to four recipients in total. The other three were also men.

Wang, Africa's last polar bear, dies

For Valentine's Day, zookeepers brought Wang a box filled with goodies and decorated with, "We Love You Wang!"

• Wang suffered from chronic arthritis and liver failure


• He lost his polar bear companion, GeeBee, in January


• He spent months grieving for her and shunned food


• The Johannesburg Zoo he's called home for 28 years euthanized him Wednesday

(CNN) -- The last polar bear in Africa died Wednesday after months of grieving his longtime companion at a zoo in Johannesburg, a far cry from his Arctic habitat.

Wang, 28, suffered from chronic arthritis and liver failure.

The Johannesburg Zoo, where he had been a major attraction since he was a cub, put him down for health reasons.

The chief veterinarian "had to make a very tough decision," the zoo said in a statement after his death.

The furry giant spent his last days pining for GeeBee, his polar bear partner of 28 years, who died of a heart attack in January.

Wang, left, and GeeBee had spent their days together since they were cubs. GeeBee died of a heart attack in January.

GeeBee and Wang had spent their days together at the zoo since they were 6 months old. It was a notable friendship -- polar bears tend to be solitary animals.

After her death, Wang walked around listless and shunned food and swimming, the latter a favorite pastime with GeeBee.

To distract him from his heartbreak so he could eat and improve his health, the zoo coaxed him with special treats and showered him with toys.

For Valentine's Day this year, zoo officials brought Wang a box filled with fruit and meat, and decorated it with love hearts and a note that said, "We Love You Wang!"

After his companion's death, Wang lost interest in food and shunned swimming, his favorite pastime.

Companies also showered him with toys and gifts, including an offer of a snow machine in the hopes that it might excite the animal long associated with subzero temperatures.

But Wang had lived his entire life in a warm climate, and a sudden change in environment would be fatal for his advanced age, the zoo said at the time.

In the wild, polar bears barely make it past 20 years, said Agnes Maluleke, the carnivore curator for the Johannesburg Zoo.

Wang was born at a Japanese zoo, and GeeBee came from Canada after both were swapped for lions. The two met at the Johannesburg Zoo in 1986.

They did not breed because polar bears' reproduction is stimulated by cold weather, Maluleke said.

The zoo has no plans to replace the polar bears.

READ: Wang, Africa's last polar bear, heartbroken over death of companion

Baby delivered at 2,250 feet

A dramatic mountain-top rescue resulted in a baby being delivered at an altitude of more than 2,000 feet in the Austrian Alps last Tuesday, the Euro Weekly News has heard.

A team comprising of 15 mountain rescue workers, a doctor and a gynaecologist scaled a mountain up to 2,350 feet in order to help a woman in labour.

The mother, who had been staying in a mountain lodge in the eastern Tyrol region of the Austrian Alps, went into labour prematurely at 24 weeks pregnant, at around 7am in the morning.

Due to extremely poor weather conditions, a rescue helicopter was unable to reach her, so the rescue team decided to go to the aid of the thirty-year-old mother-to-be on foot.

Once they had her stabilised, they started their descent, but had to stop a short while later as the baby was already on its way. She gave birth to a boy at around 6pm at 2,250 feet.

With improving weather, a helicopter was finally able to transport her to a clinic in Lienz, before moving her to a specialised neonatal unit in Villach.

A total of 25 rescue workers, together with four doctors and two helicopters were used in the operation. Speaking to the Kronen Zeitung newspaper, Gerhard Figl, who led the operation, said: "We are all physically exhausted.

“We have achieved something incredible and luckily there was a happy ending. We have saved two people's lives."

Paella to Porridge

A convicted robber who walked out of an open prison in Boston six years ago is back inside this week after authorities caught up with him.

James Johnstone, who was approaching the half way stage of a six and a half year sentence for a series of robberies and attempted robberies, was eventually tracked down to the resort of Palma on the island of Mallorca, where he was detained last month under a European Arrest Warrant.

Jonathan Dunne, prosecuting, said that Johnstone was flown back to the UK and is now back in prison serving the three years and 11 months remaining from his original sentence.

Londoner Johnstone aged 30 admitted escaping from custody on September 5, 2008. He was sentenced to serve an additional two month jail term consecutive to the original prison term he is now back serving.

Johnstone’s defence lawyer, Christopher Geeson, said Johnstone had changed his life for the better whilst he was on the run.

“He has made efforts to better himself. He has taken some very positive steps in his life...his girlfriend, who has been with him for four years, had a child this year.”

Commenting on his own rehabilitation Mr Geeson added, “He has been making a living through work rather than crime. He was effectively on the road to being a lifetime serious criminal but he has effectively drawn back from that.”

EU criticises UK’s prisoner vote ban

THE European Court of Human Rights has criticised Britain yet again for not allowing prisoners to vote in elections, but denied convicts who challenged the ban the right to compensation.

Tuesday’s ruling came following a case brought by 10 prisoners who had not been able to vote in the 2009 European Parliament elections.

The European Court recognised that although some effort has been made to change legislation on the matter, the continued ban goes againsta prisoner’s right to free elections, as set in the European Convention of Human Rights.

This is not the first time that the court in Strasbourg has condemned British legislation. The issue has been raised several times since 2005, with the court maintaining that whilst countries should be able to choose independently which prisoners can vote, a blanket ban is illegal.

British Prime Minister David Cameron has previously said that the prospect of allowing prisoners the vote makes him feel ‘physically ill,’ although the political reality is that a draft bill and subsequent examination by a parliamentary committee have recommended that prisoners serving a sentence of 12 months or less should be given the vote.

The fact that no reform has yet been made to the legislation is the reason behind the European Court’s criticism.

A spokesman for the British government said: "The government has always been clear that it believes prisoner voting is an issue that should ultimately be decided in the UK.

“This is not a straightforward issue and the government needs to think carefully about the recommendations, which included new options for implementation.”