SAINT-DENIS, France, Sept. 12 (UPI) -- The Piton de la Fournaise, or Peak of the Furnace, volcano on Reunion Island in the Indian Ocean erupted on Sunday -- the second time this year.

The volcano is one of the most active volcanoes in the world. It has erupted more than 150 times since the 17th century. The latest eruption occurred in an uninhabited area of the island, which belongs to France, and does not yet threaten the local population.

Hikers passing by the volcano took time to watch the eruption.

Reunion Island has a population of nearly 900,000 people. It is located east of Madagascar.</s>Former Nigeria World Cup star Mutiu Adepoju has been appointed by the Spanish top-flight to promote La Liga in the football-mad African country where the English Premier League is the big draw.

The 45-year-old, who spent more than a decade in Spain playing for the likes of Racing Santander, Real Sociedad and the Real Madrid reserve team, confirmed Tuesday he has been appointed La Liga manager for Nigeria.

“The EPL has the edge right now, but we want La Liga to be much more visible because Africa is a big football market and I believe in the nearest future we will do so,” Adepoju said. “In two years, we hope to be the market leader with the biggest media visibility in Nigeria.”

The Premier League is widely followed in Nigeria with top local stars such as Chelsea’s John Obi Mikel and Victor Moses, Kelechi Iheanacho (Manchester City), Odion Ighalo, Isaac Success (Watford) and Alex Iwobi (Arsenal).

But unlike the Adepoju generation — which boasted many big names in La Liga — Granada defender Uche Agbo is now the only Nigerian star playing regularly in Spain.

The Nigeria Professional Football League has signed a five-year co-operation deal with La Liga and already this agreement has seen an All-Stars team from Nigeria feature on a playing tour of Spain last month.

La Liga will soon donate 4,000 footballs to the country, while coaches from Spain are scheduled to visit schools and academies in Nigeria. An under-13 tournament, La Liga Promesa, will be staged in Nigeria and South Africa.

La Liga Foundation has also made a cash donation to help Nigeria Premier League club El Kanemi Warriors and Internally Displaced People (IDPs) as a result of the havoc in northeast Nigeria caused by the Islamist group Boko Haram’s continuing security threat.

Catalan giants Barcelona are also in the process of setting up a residential academy in Nigeria’s commercial capital city of Lagos.

“La Liga is opening to the world,” said Adepoju, who wants to open the door of La Liga to Nigerian players.

“Within a few months of the agreement (with the Nigeria league), La Liga has taken a team from here to Spain, where there was also a workshop for Nigerian club managers on organisation and marketing to make our clubs more viable.”</s>In the luminous 'La La Land,' a shot in the arm for movies

TORONTO (AP) — Movies aren't what they were. I'll wait for it on Netflix. Television is so much better right now.

Those kinds of sentiments can feel ubiquitous to anyone who cares deeply about movies, as well as for those whose love has waned. Writer-director Damien Chazelle has heard them all and he has one glorious, singing-and-dancing answer to them.

Chazelle's luminous "La La Land," the sensation of the fall film festival circuit, has audiences swooning for his modern-day musical starring Emma Stone and Ryan Gosling. The film, itself, is an unapologetically romantic argument for the movies, in all their splendor.

"You're a part of so many of those conversations. Theaters are dying. Movies are dying, etcetera, etcetera," Chazelle, 31, said in an interview ahead of the film's Monday evening premiere in Toronto. "It's the kind of thing where I'm either hoping they're wrong or having to reflect: 'Man, I must have been born 30 years too late.' Because all I've only ever wanted to do is make movies for the big screen since I can remember."

The film, which will hit theaters Dec. 2, stars Stone as an aspiring actress in Los Angeles who, in between soul-crushing auditions, meets a jazz pianist (Gosling) trying to stay true to the music he's devoted himself to. They are both strivers in an unforgiving Hollywood, their technicolor dreams a faraway fantasy compared to their daily reality.

Since premiering at the Venice Film Festival, "La La Land" has taken on the aura of a revival movement, a shot in the arm for a sometimes beleaguered movie landscape. There, Stone won best actress (likely a sign of things to come in Hollywood's coming awards season) and Tom Hanks, who has nothing to do with the movie, gushed about it.

"When you see something that is brand new, that you can't imagine, and you think, 'Well thank God this landed,' because I think a movie like 'La La Land' would be anathema to studios. Number one, it is a musical and no one knows the songs,'" Hanks said at a festival event. He concluded ominously: "If the audience doesn't go and embrace something as wonderful as this, then we are all doomed."

Chazelle wrote the script to "La La Land" about six years ago, but his pleas to make the film went unanswered until his 2014 breakthrough, the Oscar-winning "Whiplash," about an aspiring jazz drummer. While the film is awash in nostalgia, it has connected not for the way it resurrects the past but for how it seeks to unite it with today, like an MGM musical let loose.

"The movie is about reconciling that with the present and realizing you have to live now — and also that that's not necessarily a bad thing," said Chazelle. "I know I have it in me to be a nostalgist. Certainly the musical lover in me, specifically. For whatever reason, the musicals I love the most are the ones of the '30s, '40s, '50s and '60s. There are musicals since then that I love but not ones that speak to me directly. And I grew up playing jazz. So there's a lot of old-timey stuff in my tastes or background."

While the film's song and dance routines resemble the breezy grace of "Singin' in the Rain" or "The Umbrellas of Cherbourg," they aren't set on sound stages but in a modern Los Angeles. The barn-burning opening number takes place in a freeway traffic jam. A memorable tap-dancing scene hovers over golden-hour LA. All of it was filmed in Cinemascope.

"Part of the whole idea of this movie from the beginning was to very resolutely set it in today's Los Angeles and even start off with the things we think of as the most annoying parts of existence in modern LA: the traffic jams, the shallow parties, the celebrity culture, the one-note industry talk of the city," said Chazelle. "But from that, build to a love letter that's hopefully, as a result, a more fully-fleshed love letter, not just a sugar-coated portrait of the city."

By going back to the soul of Los Angeles, the Hollywood dream factory might just be churning again.</s>The film which stars Ryan Gosling and Emma Stone as Sebastian and Mia, two artists who fall in love in a fantastical Los Angeles filled with singing and dancing, added to the list of accolades it has already gotten on Monday when it enchanted audiences at the Toronto International Film Festival.

Those in attendance for the screening in Toronto even cheered following some of the film's multiple musical numbers, making the experience feel more like a Broadway show than a movie.

The film, which was directed by Damien Chazelle and is being distributed by Lionsgate, was easily the most anticipated film of the festival. It came into Toronto having garnered acclaim from a number of movie critics and even Tom Hanks.

Following its world premiere at the Venice Film Festival and screenings at both Colorado's Telluride Film Festival and Toronto, "La La Land" is now on, if not at the top of, many critics lists of early Oscars favorites.

Its position on these lists make sense for reasons even beyond the great early reviews. Chazelle's last film, "Whiplash," was the darling of the 2014 season. Plus, Hollywood loves to give awards to films about Hollywood ("Argo," "The Artist," etc.) and as much as this is a love story between the characters played by Gosling and Stone, it's also a love story about Hollywood itself. The Toronto Film Festival was packed with movies that are intensely powerful ("The Birth of a Nation"), emotional ("A Monster Calls") and thought provoking ("Arrival"). But "La La Land" is the one that feels most like Hollywood at its purest. Related: David Oyelowo and Lupita Nyong'o talk Oscars diversity and 'Queen of Katwe' The film, down to its art deco title font, seems like something out of a time capsule from Hollywood's golden age. Chazelle structures it as a love letter to that era while not letting the story of Sebastian and Mia's modern romance get bogged down in nostalgia. Most interestingly, he crafts "La La Land" as a story in which reality and fantasy are in conflict with one another and leaves moviegoers to choose which is truer. "La La Land" doesn't hit theaters until December. When it does, though, it's bound to win awards. It could also find itself bringing in solid box office numbers from audiences who, after distressing news cycle after distressing news cycle, may be in need of a world where people sing in L.A. traffic.</s>Gosling, Stone spin modern twist on old Hollywood in 'La La Land'

TORONTO, Sept 13 (Reuters) - While intense dramas and true life stories have dominated this year's Toronto International Film Festival, a vibrant love story inspired by the golden age of Hollywood musicals has found a warm welcome.

"La La Land," a musical contemporary tale of star-crossed lovers chasing their dreams in Hollywood and starring Emma Stone and Ryan Gosling, received a standing ovation at its premiere Tuesday night.

"It's a great story and they're great engaging characters and the music kind of aids in that," Gosling, who plays a tortured jazz pianist, told Reuters on the red carpet. He added that he didn't think viewers had to like musicals to enjoy the film.

Stone, who plays an aspiring actress, said "I learned to tap and ballroom dance and sing live on camera, which was pretty insane."

"La La Land" is the second feature film from writer-director Damien Chazelle, 31. His first film "Whiplash," an intense study of a jazz drummer's quest to perfection, won three Oscars.

"I love the old Hollywood musicals, as you can see, but I really have a fondness for the French answers to those musicals," Chazelle told the audience and a short question-and-answer session after the screening.

"I wanted to do a musical, but really ground it in real life and invest it with stuff that felt messier and real," Chazelle said.

"La La Land" has already been drumming up awards buzz. Critics have praised the performances and the intricate, colorful, love letter to a bygone era of movies.

The film follows the two leads as their lives converge in poetic chaos while they try to make their respective dreams come true, even as they fall in love.

"Every character has to negotiate the balance between dreams and reality," Chazelle said. "These two will always be the perfect lovers to me." (Editing by Alan Crosby)</s>NEW YORK, Sept 8 (Reuters) – A U.S. government weather forecaster said Thursday La Nina conditions were no longer likely to develop during the Northern Hemisphere fall and winter 2016/17, saying neutral conditions were more likely.

The Climate Prediction Center (CPC), an agency of the National Weather Service, said in a monthly forecast there was a 55 to 60 percent chance of El Nino-Southern Oscillation (ENSO) neutral conditions, meaning La Nina was no longer favored to occur.

Last month, CPC said La Nina conditions were slightly favored to occur, with a 55 to 60 percent chance of developing during the fall and winter of 2016/17.

La Nina, which tends to occur unpredictably every two to seven years, is characterized by unusually cold temperatures in the equatorial Pacific Ocean.

The CPC’s predictions follow a damaging El Nino weather period. While typically less harsh than El Nino, severe La Nina occurrences have been linked to floods and droughts that can roil commodity markets.

The reduced chances of La Nina will be welcomed by producers of corn and soybeans in Brazil and Argentina, where La Nina conditions can cause dry weather that hurts harvests, said Donald Keeney, senior agricultural meteorologist with Maryland-based MDA Information Systems.

“It would certainly benefit South America…they would see wetter conditions there,” Keeney said, adding that rubber producers in Indonesia could also benefit.

But the return of neutral conditions could harm cotton growers in India, the world’s largest producer of the fiber. La Nina tends to boost monsoon rains, and fading La Nina forecasts have led to lower precipitation expectations.

Keeney said the adjusted forecast could mean better chances of winter precipitation in drought-stricken California, but that it was too early to say for sure.

The CPC first warned that La Nina could develop in February, and maintained that such conditions were likely in each monthly forecast since then.

In June, the agency said there was a 75 percent chance La Nina would develop, though it lowered that outlook in subsequent months.

It said Thursday the average of its models favored “borderline neutral-La Nina Conditions,” but added that its more recent models more strongly favored ENSO-neutral conditions.</s>He's one of the world's most handsome men, inspiring the Hey Girl memes with his charming boy next door persona.

But it was Emma Stone and not her co-star Ryan Gosling who drew the eye as the pair promoted their comedic movie-musical, La La Land on Monday.

Emma looked lovely and polished in a cream ensemble, which featured yellow and black ruffle detailing as the pair visited the Variety Studio at the Toronto International Film Festival.

The twosome were there to promote their film, which hits theaters on December 16.

Still, Ryan, 35, looked dashing in a striped dress shirt and blue blazer.

In La La Land, Ryan plays jazz pianist Sebastian, the love interest of Mia, an aspiring actress.

The film, directed by Damien Chazelle, has already taken home a major award.

According to Variety, Emma has taken home the Venice Film Festival Award for best actress.

In an interview with the trade site, the actress and singer recalled her early days, when she herself was trying to break into the business.

'I definitely understood the feeling of moving to Los Angeles and having a dream to be an actor in films and to get to be a part of things that I loved and inspire people in some way,' began the star.

'It's pretty insane that we're talking about this movie and it's something that I'm so proud and excited to be a part of, when that is the goal of the character, is to be a part of something like this.'</s>Emma Stone was a ray of sunshine in a yellow sequinned mini dress.

But Ryan Gosling was the toast of Toronto at the premiere of their film, La La Land, in his native country of Canada.

The 35-year-old actor smouldered at the 2016 Toronto International Film Festival in a dark blue suit, and was mobbed by fans while hitting the red carpet.

The Oscar nominee made his way to the Princess of Wales Theatre on Monday as adoring admirers lined the streets waiting to catch a glimpse of the hunky A-lister.

Ryan was polished to perfection in a midnight blue suit with buttoned-up crisp white dress shirt and black leather dress shoes.

He looked dapper with his blonde mane combed to the side as he sported a bit of scruff.

Emma, 27, oozed radiance in a bright canary yellow mini dress that showcased her slender stems.

She cut a ladylike figure in the feminine frock which included detailed sequinned and lace embellishments.

Her fiery red tresses were styled in an old Hollywood glam vibe and the Oscar nominee opted for a bit of black eyeliner for a dramatic effect.

In their upcoming comedic movie-musical, Ryan plays a jazz pianist that falls in love with an aspiring actress in LA, played by Emma.

La La Land features an all-star lineup including John Legend, J.K. Simmons and Tom Everett Scott, and is set for a U.S. release on December 2.

Emma and Ryan posed together on the red carpet for what is their third film together.

They previously co-starred in 2011's Crazy, Stupid, Love and 2013's Gangster Squad.

'I want to work with Ryan, a lot, if he'll have me,' the Superbad actress confessed in a 2013 interview with Collider.

'Well, Emma owes me money and the only way I can try to get that back is by doing movies with her,' joked The Nice Guy star.

'She still owes me that money. It was hard for us to be serious together,' Ryan said of filming Crazy, Stupid, Love with Emma.

'We were a couple of knuckleheads. And then, we thought, “Oh, this would be fun to work together again,” but we had to try to be serious.'

The pair co-starred in the romantic comedy together for which Gosling received a Golden Globe nomination for his role.</s>Volkswagen Philippines and the Makati Shangri-La Hotel formalized a partnership last week after the latter received 31 units of the VW Passat luxury sedan for use as its official limousine.

The formal turnover marks the beginning of a partnership between Makati Shangri-La and Volkswagen Philippines, both of which carry the world’s most prestigious hotel and automotive brands that espouse style and sophistication for their respective markets. It also completes the total 80 Volkswagen units purchased by the hotel, including 40 units of the compact sedan Jetta, among others.

The Shangri-La brand name is renowned globally for its rich tradition of innovation and personalized service from the heart. These remarkable standards inspired Shangri-La to select Volkswagen, which delivers the same promise that embodies the perfect combination.

The Makati Shangri-La Hotel was recently voted as the “Best Business Hotel in Manila” by Business Traveller (Asia Pacific), a distinction it has held for seven consecutive years since 2009.

The Passat limousine was awarded the 2015 European Car of the Year and it was also recognized in the 2015 Geneva Motor Show for Best in Class Performance on interior and technology.

The acquisition of the Passat and Jetta units was accomplished by Nissan Car Lease Philippines (NCLP) whose motto, “Premium service for premium people,” aligns well with Shangri-La’s luxury hospitality, and highlights the mission and expertise of the leasing firm as a premium transport provider. NCLP is one of the best-known car rental brands in the Philippines with over 24 years of unequalled premium service to its distinguished clientele. For NCLP, this symbolic fleet of Volkswagen cars for Makati Shangri-La’s guests enhances its services portfolio, while at the same time highlights the hotel and automaker’s credo of putting “people first.”

The Passat, which bears a rich 42-year lineage, comes straight from Germany, with German-tuned driving dynamics and a responsive and efficient BlueMotion 2.0-liter TSI engine generating 220 ps (216 horsepower), managed by the 6-speed dual-clutch Direct Shift Gearbox (DSG) transmission. The combination of power, fuel efficiency, and world-class German automotive engineering, design, and craftsmanship characteristic of every Volkswagen model make the Passat the ideal vehicle for business travelers who choose the Makati Shangri-La as their hotel, assuring them of premium comfort and convenience even during airport transfers.</s>In their new musical “La La Land,” Emma Stone and Ryan Gosling perform a six-minute, single-take, tap-dance number while their characters search for a parked Toyota Prius atop a hill in Griffith Park, the sun setting behind them, the Prius key fob occasionally beeping in time with the music.

It’s a moment infused with nostalgia for classic musicals like “Singin’ in the Rain” and “The Umbrellas of Cherbourg,” but informed by the youthful spirit of its stars and 31-year-old writer-director, Damien Chazelle.

“They figured something out in the older musicals in terms of how to shoot dance and we’ve unlearned it,” Chazelle said in an interview with Stone as “La La Land” screened for enthusiastic Telluride Film Festival audiences over Labor Day weekend after receiving an equally warm reception in Venice. “People talk about shorter attention spans these days and maybe that’s why dance isn’t filmed the same way. I find it a lot more involving when I can see something that’s real and not tinkered with… That is how the sky looks. That is Ryan and Emma dancing. Those are their voices, their feet.”

“La La Land,” Chazelle’s follow-up to his 2014 jazz drama “Whiplash,” will premiere Monday for a wider audience at the Toronto International Film Festival before distributor Lionsgate opens it in theaters starting Dec. 2.

The melancholic romance stars Stone as Mia, an aspiring actress serving coffee on a studio lot, and Gosling as Sebastian, a stubborn jazz pianist who dreams of opening his own club. Both are making their way as members of Los Angeles’ artistic underclass, a life of temp jobs, auditions and freeway traffic jams, when they meet and serve as each other’s creative catalysts. John Legend plays a supporting role, as a more successful, mainstream jazz performer.

With a score by Justin Hurwitz, Chazelle’s Harvard University classmate and “Whiplash” collaborator, and choreography by Mandy Moore (“So You Think You Can Dance” Mandy Moore, not singer/actress Mandy Moore), “La La Land” is a modern rarity: an original musical, with no pre-existing intellectual property or marquee name songwriters. The mix of fantastical music numbers and naturalistic acting feels as if someone had plopped John Cassavetes on the MGM lot in the 1940s.

“I saw this story as so romantic,” Stone said. “These two people somehow find each other when they’re each in a rut, and inspire each other to follow the paths they’ve been dreaming about all along. In a way, that is a kind of soulmate.”

The characters represent different sides of Chazelle, he said, particularly a lonely period when he first moved to Los Angeles in 2008 hoping to begin his filmmaking career. (It didn’t take long -- the director’s first feature, the jazz romance “Guy and Madeline on a Park Bench,” hit theaters in 2010).

Stone said she and Gosling brought their own excruciating, real-life audition experiences to the movie, including one incident Stone’s character endures that happened to Gosling, when he was performing a crying scene and the casting director took a phone call in the middle of his audition.

“I’ve had it where no one looks up from their paper, ‘cause they’ve written you off the moment you walk in the room,” said Stone, who, despite having acted since she was a teenager and earned an Oscar nomination for 2014’s “Birdman,” said she auditioned as recently as the past year. “It feels pretty nuts, especially if you really want the part. ‘Thanks for coming in’ means it’s never gonna happen. It is a little heartbreaking.”

Chazelle wrote the script for “La La Land” in 2010, and began a process of hearing what he called, “very harsh nos” from potential financiers.

They said “no one wants to see an original musical,” Chazelle said. “It’s this weird movie that needs to be both a fantastical musical at a certain scale and yet this realistic love story... All that, plus it’s a pretty young team in terms of me and Justin, unknown and unproven. It’s one thing if it’s an original musical with a songwriter people know. This is me and my college friend saying, ‘Hey, trust us.’”

The tide of “no” changed after “Whiplash,” which earned five Oscar nominations, including a screenplay nomination for Chazelle and a supporting actor win for J.K. Simmons, and grossed nearly $40 million worldwide off a $3.3 million production budget.

Chazelle said his budget for “La La Land” was “somewhere in the 20s” and the money shows on the screen, in scenes like an ambitious dance sequence set on an EZ Pass ramp connecting the 105 and 110 freeways, and in a flying number inside the Griffith Observatory.

Stone, who first met with Chazelle while she was playing Sally Bowles in “Cabaret” on Broadway, had studied some dance as a child, but had to learn tap and ballroom dancing for the role.

“I don’t know if you’ve ever seen the Laker girls?” Stone said, when asked to describe the style of dance she took as a child. “It’s called ‘pom dancing.’ And a year of ballet. But they told me in ballet class that I smiled too much.”

During a four-month rehearsal period at their production offices in Atwater Village, Chazelle held cast and crew screenings of classic films, including “Umbrellas of Cherbourg,” a primary inspiration. Stone, whose favorite film is the 1931 Charlie Chaplin romantic comedy “City Lights,” relished the chance to dive into Hollywood history, but found some of her most helpful inspiration in clips from old musicals where the actors flubbed a note or a dance move.

“We aren’t Fred and Ginger, even though Ryan is an incredible dancer,” Stone said. “It was nice to know that if we fell on our feet or if we laughed -- in the song ‘City of Stars’ I laughed twice because I was out of tune -- Damien was celebrating rather than yelling ‘Cut! We’re going back. Make it perfect!’”

Moore, the choreographer, echoed the idea that emotion was more important than technique, which Stone said was key when they shot the Prius scene, which had to be completed during the brief magic-hour window at sunset, leaving a total of eight takes to get it right over two days of shooting.
The Piton de la Fournaise (Peak of the Furnace) shield volcano on France's Réunion island in the Indian Ocean erupts for the second time this year. It is one of the world's most active.